1. The Comical, or Imitation of Inferior People
1.1. Incongruity, Degradation, and Self-Parody: The Implicit Narrator
1.2. Subject and Object: Relation and Metarelation
1.3. Funniness and Ridicule: An Essay on Nonentities
1.4. Who is the Inferior Other?
2.1. Humor, Laughter, and the Brain
2.2. From Tickling to Humor
2.3. From Laughter to Humor
2.4. Play-Challenge, or James Sully Redux
3. Play, Language, Laughter
3.1. Orderly Play as a Metaphor of Culture
3.2. Disorderly Play as a Metaphor of Nature
3.3. The Anti-Referential Function of Language
3.4. Irony and Humor: The Two Ways of Playing with Signs
3.5. Humor and Laughter as a Species Reaction
4.1. Emotions, Reflexes, Symbols
4.2. Laughter and Evil: The History of a Misunderstanding