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Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Johnathon Swift, Lewis Carroll -- all of these writers are known for their black humour.
Using humour on topics of death is fascinating when you analyze it. In many circumstances, we laugh at such humour in a different way than we do at humour of other topic matter. In a way, we laugh at dark humour as a kind of nervous release, as death is something most of us think about but know very little about, especially when you consider experience.
Death is tied to the unknown, it is tied to fear. We laugh at things that may otherwise frighten us on a deeper level. We laugh heartily, and it provides us a temporary relief from this fear.
Those of us who have trouble finding the humour in it, might be affected by other circumstances or, perhaps, are more in tune to the fear of the unknown that is death.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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