Editing Humour (section)

==Views==
Some claim that humour should not be explained. Author [[E. B. White]] once said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/984.html|title=The Quotations Page: Quote from E.B. White|access-date=26 August 2018}}</ref> Counter to this argument, protests against "offensive" cartoons invite the dissection of humour or its lack by aggrieved individuals and communities. This process of dissecting humour does not necessarily banish a sense of humour but directs attention towards its politics and assumed universality.<ref>Ritu Gairola Khanduri. 2014. [http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/authors/246935 Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History of the Modern World]. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]].</ref>

[[Arthur Schopenhauer]] lamented the misuse of ''humour'' (a German [[loanword]] from English) to mean any type of comedy. However, both ''humour'' and ''comic'' are often used when theorising about the subject. The connotations of ''humour'' as opposed to ''comic'' are said to be that of response versus stimulus. Additionally, ''humour'' was thought to include a combination of ridiculousness and wit in an individual; the paradigmatic case being Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff. The French were slow to adopt the term ''humour''; in French, ''humeur'' and ''humour'' are still two different words, the former referring to a person's [[Mood (psychology)|mood]] or to the archaic concept of the four [[Four Temperaments|humours]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2012}}

Non-satirical humour can be specifically termed ''droll humour'' or ''recreational drollery''.<ref>Seth Benedict Graham ''[http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11032003-192424/unrestricted/grahamsethb_etd2003.pdf A cultural analysis of the Russo-Soviet Anekdot] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116083634/http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11032003-192424/unrestricted/grahamsethb_etd2003.pdf |date=2013-01-16 }}'' 2003 p. 13</ref><ref>Bakhtin, Mikhail. ''Rabelais and His World'' [1941, 1965]. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press p. 12</ref>

Humour is also observed in [[great apes]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-02-25 |title=Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour |url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240223-do-animals-have-sense-of-humour |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=www.bbc.com |language=en-GB}}</ref>