Bergson's _Laughter_ has been out of print for too long. It's the best theoretical study of comedy available. A meditation by the great philosopher of "elan vital" about our natural response to humans acting mechanically, _Laughter_ is also about the nuts and bolts of comedy. Moliere is the main model, but it works for Shakespeare, Chaplin and Preston Sturges just as well.

Bergson offers a taxonomy of laughter. The description is concise, realistic, and rife with examples. He begins with a broad definition of anything that is laughable and further narrows the definition where appropriate. Never have I encountered an example not explainable by this.

Henri Bergson describes why we laugh, and subdivides this description further into three characteristics. Each of these characteristics is then divided further occassionally. Example: >We laugh at mechanical rigidity. The three types are repetition, inversion, and reciprocal interference of series. An example of repetition is a frozen facial expression (repetition) and is comical only if it's imitatable.< Then he proceeds to give examples of word play, character, actions, etc which illustrate his points.

Sypher's book was the first to look critically at the eighteenth-century British literature which dealt with slaves and slavery. He considers poems, plays, and novels, and looks at the way in which eighteenth-century writers constructed an idea of the Negro. In particular he examines the idea of the 'Captive King' - the African of noble birth who is carried off to be a slave. This was a favorite theme amongst eighteenth-century anti-slavery writers.

His survey of the literature of the period is detailed and incisive. He has an understanding and a grasp of eighteenth-century anti-slavery literature which is both admirable and worrying: one wonders why he has made this his specialism.

The book is an important one. It is the first to look at such literature and the first to note that British anti-slavery literature was more concerned with following literary fashion than with freeing the slaves. But it is also the product of its times, the 1940s, and as such may offend some with its naivety. In my view it is now outdated, but at the time of its publication was an important work which challenged the complacency of academics who worked on black history. It can only be read now as an historical document, but even so, it is still worth reading. b.a.carey@qmw.ac.uk