SOURCE: Walton, Priscilla L. “‘What She Got to Sing About?’: Comedy and The Color Purple.” ARIEL 21, no. 2 (April 1990): 59-74.

In the following essay, Walton defines comic theory and classifies The Color Purple as a comedic novel based on examples from the work.

[Laughter] is a froth with a saline base. Like froth it sparkles. It is gaiety itself. But the philosopher who gathers a handful to taste may find that the substance is scanty and the aftertaste bitter.

(Bergson 190)

This observation, written in 1900 by Henri Bergson, in the conclusion to his essay “Laughter,” ironically anticipates the changes that occur in the comic mode of the succeeding century when laughter's “froth” virtually disappears and its “bitter aftertaste” comes to predominate. After 1900, literature—comedy in particular—becomes more acrimonious and discordant, perhaps better to represent life in our century of “disorder and irrationalism” (Sypher 201). The comic novel ceases to ring...