/lit/ - Literature

>>22278373
You bring up a good point I think, what I was thinking earlier was something like this; that humour is a human reality absent from the entire Abrahamic tradition.

What I mean by that is this, in the traditions all of human reality is brought into the story, we have meanings for anger and sadness and happiness, for suffering and reward and longing. The mindset of these religions can be very existential. And yet what I've found, is that nothing dispels existential dread like humour. Now I think we're getting close to the reason why humour is not included in this huge story of both cosmic, and inner consequences, it's that it's hard to write about and when you do it successfully it upends everything else.

Seriously, I could be thinking about suffering and hell and a whole host of important things, but if something is funny all that thought goes out the window. Life is very simple if you are in a state where lots of things are funny. Humour subverts everything and seems to speak to a reality that admits it doesn't understand itself, but just rejoices in the absurdities. It's in a way very similar to common sense, it grounds you. it reveals flaws in everything.

So I think it's actually an important observation why humour isn't a part of the bible, or a part of how Abrahamic traditions understand life and purpose. We have Gods wrath, Christs suffering, the Disciples joy at the resurrection etc etc. We have lots of those kinds of things.
But in pagan pantheons we had gods who are tricksters and jokers. Loki actually represents what I was saying earlier about subversion well. He's constantly upending the order of Asgard through tricks and jokes, sometimes with sinister consequences. But the main point is that humour in a mythos creates an element which doesn't jive well with things like dogma and absolute knowledge, it's too wacky.

>trickster god
>just wants to cause chaos
>barely tricks anyone
>chaos isn’t really chaos

Why is Loki such a low tier trickster? Odin May be trickie

What are some books about guile trickster characters?

>>12944567
Why the fuck did Odin keep him around, again?