ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains the three parts, addressing each of the topics in turn, and further unified by an interest in fleshing out, wherever possible, this literary tradition's comic efficacy and comic functionality. It concerns laughter as a central point of reference in our corpus, not only on the meta-level of narratorial exposition, digression and conclusion, but also within the respective narrative worlds themselves. The book examines selected elements of narrative design. In principle these may all be regarded as strategies for facilitating the eruption of recipient laughter, although some appear to exercise this function more imminently than others. The book deals with the interdependent themes of 'body' and 'society', two fundamental categories of meaning in the perception of the world at large through the comic lens.
