Falstaff as an Example for Freud's "Comic": Ch 1 Note 35

Falstaff as an Example for Freud's "Comic"

James R. Kincaid, Aerol Arnold Professor of English, University of Southern California

Note 35 to Chapter 1 of the author's Dickens and the Rhetoric of Laughter which Clarendon Press published in 1972. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author and of the Clarendon Press, which retains copyright.

Falstaff is Freud's best example of the "comic", a means of providing for laughter by utilizing the energies of inhibition, now superfluous in the face of a completely uninhibited man.

Last modified: 1 May 2001