Styles and techniques in humour

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 692.

Pun.

Verbal humour

The procedure is to determine the nature of the two (or more) frames of reference whose collision gives rise to the comic effect--to discover the type of logic or "rules of the game" that govern each. In the more sophisticated type of joke, the logic is implied and hidden, and the moment it is stated in explicit form, the joke is dead.

Most puns strike one as atrocious, perhaps because they represent the most primitive form of humour; two disparate strings of thought tied together by an acoustic knot. But the very primitiveness of such association based on pure sound ("hol") may account for the pun's immense popularity with children and its prevalence in certain types of mental disorder ("punning mania"). From the play on sounds--puns and Spoonerisms--an ascending series leads to the play on words and so to the play on ideas. When Groucho Marx says of a safari in Africa, "We shot two bucks, but that was all the money we had," the joke hinges on the two meanings of the word buck. It would be less funny without the reference to Groucho, which evokes a visual image instantly arousing high expectations. The story about the marquis above may be considered of a superior type of humour because it plays not on mere words but on ideas. It would be quite easy--and equally boring--to draw up a list in which jokes and witticisms are classified according to the nature of the frames of reference whose collision creates the comic effect. A few have already been mentioned: metaphorical versus literal meaning (the daughter's "hand"); professional versus common sense logic (the doctor); incompatible codes of behaviour (the marquis); confrontations of the trivial and the exalted ("eternal bliss"); trains of reasoning travelling, happily joined together, in opposite directions (the sadist who is kind to the masochist). The list could be extended indefinitely; in fact any two frames of reference can be made to yield a comic effect of sorts by hooking them together and infusing a drop of malice into the concoction. The frames may even be defined by such abstract concepts as "time" and "weather": the absent-minded professor who tries to read the temperature from his watch or to tell the time from the thermometer is comic in the same way as a game of table tennis played with a soccer ball or a game of rugby played with a table tennis ball. The variations are infinite, the formula remains the same. Jokes and anecdotes have a single point of culmination.

The literary forms of sustained humour, such as the picaresque novel, do not rely on a single effect but on a series of minor climaxes. The narrative moves along the line of intersection of contrasted planes, such as the fantasy world of Don Quixote and the cunning horse sense of Sancho Panza, or is made to oscillate between them. As a result, tension is continuously generated and discharged in mild amusement. Comic verse thrives on the melodious union of incongruities, such as the "cabbages and kings" in Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and particularly on the contrast between lofty form and flat-footed content. Certain metric forms associated with heroic poetry, such as the hexameter or Alexandrine, arouse expectations of pathos, of the exalted; to pour into these epic molds some homely, trivial content--"beautiful soup, so rich and green/ waiting in a hot tureen"--is an almost infallible comic device. The rolling rhythms of the first lines of a limerick that carry, instead of a mythical hero such as Hector or Achilles, a young lady from Ohio for a ride make her ridiculous even before the expected calamities befall her. Instead of a heroic mold, a soft lyrical one may also pay off:. . . And what could be moister Than tears of an oyster? Another type of incongruity between form and content yields the bogus proverb: "The rule is: jam tomorrow and jam yesterday--but never jam today." Two contradictory statements have been telescoped into a line whose homely, admonitory sound conveys the impression of a popular adage. In a similar way, nonsense verse achieves its effect by pretending to make sense, by forcing the reader to project meaning into the phonetic pattern of the jabberwocky, as one interprets the ink blots in a Rorschach test.

The satire is a verbal caricature that shows a deliberately distorted image of a person, institution, or society. The traditional method of the caricaturist is to exaggerate those features he considers to be characteristic of his victim's personality and to simplify by leaving out everything that is not relevant for his purpose. The satirist uses the same technique, and the features of society he selects for magnification are, of course, those of which he disapproves. The result is a juxtaposition, in the reader's mind, of his habitual image of the world in which he moves and its absurd reflection in the satirist's distorting mirror. He is made to recognize familiar features in the absurd and absurdity in the familiar. Without this double vision the satire would be humourless. If the human Yahoos were really such evil-smelling monsters as Gulliver's Houyhnhnm hosts claim, then Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) would not be a satire but the statement of a deplorable truth. Straight invective is not satire; satire must deliberately overshoot its mark. A similar effect is achieved if, instead of exaggerating the objectionable features, the satirist projects them by means of the allegory onto a different background, such as an animal society. A succession of writers, from the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes through Swift to such 20th-century satirists as Anatole France and George Orwell, have used this technique to focus attention on deformities of society that, blunted by habit, are taken for granted.

The criteria that determine whether a humorous offering will be judged good, bad, or indifferent are partly a matter of period taste and personal preference and partly dependent on the style and technique of the humorist. It would seem that these criteria can be summed up under three main headings: originality, emphasis, and economy. The merits of originality are self-evident; it provides the essential element of surprise, which cuts across our expectations. But true originality is not very often met either in humour or in other forms of art. One common substitute for it is to increase the tension of the audience by various techniques of suggestive emphasis. The clown's domain is the rich, coarse type of humour: he piles it on; he appeals to sadistic, sexual, scatological impulses. One of his favourite tricks is repetition of the same situation, the same key phrase. This diminishes the effect of surprise, but it has a tension-accumulating effect: emotion is easily drawn into the familiar channel--more and more liquid is being pumped into the punctured pipeline. Emphasis on local colour and ethnic peculiararities, such as Scottish or Cockney stories, for example, is a further means to channel emotion into familiar tracks. The Scotsman or Cockney stories must, of course, be a caricature if the comic purpose is to be achieved. In other words, exaggeration and simplification once more appear as indispensible tools to provide emphasis. In the higher forms of humour, however, emphasis tends to yield to the opposite kind of virtue--economy. Economy, in humour and art, does not mean mechanical brevity but implicit hints instead of explicit statements--the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack. Old-fashioned cartoons, such as those featuring the British lion and the Russian bear, hammered their message in; the modern cartoon usually poses a riddle that the reader must solve by an imaginative effort in order to see the joke.In humour, as in other forms of art, emphasis and economy are complementary techniques. The first forces the offering down the consumer's throat; the second tantalizes to whet his appetite.

Humour is a device used in fiction and intended to cause laughter. The object of humour may be a funny incident or a odd feature of human character. The essence of humour is generally warmth, sympathy, fellow feeling. Schiller compared it with “the playful teasing fondness of a mother to her child”. Humour requires wit and sensibility on the part of the humorist. Addison gives humour its genealogy. He says that Truth was the founder of the family, and father of Good Sense. His son was Wit, who married Mirth, and Humour was their child.

A humorous tone may be created linguistically by an apt usage of deliberate exaggerations (or hyperbole), a round-about way of naming things (or periphrasis), unexpected comparison (or simile), jargonisms, dialectical words, words which sound amusing in the particular situation because they do not belong to it, learned words, etc. The usage of these means often produces a humorous effect and testifies to the inventiveness and wit of the author.

But humour may be achieved even when the tone is not humorous. Some writers as M. Twain, St. Leacock, often develop humour using a mock-serious tone, maintaining all the while a perfectly “straight face”. In such cases humour is developed extra-linguistically through situation and character. Humour may be attained by a funny incident when a character finds himself in an amusing or ridiculous situation, or by a comical personage who says or does absurd things. Humour may be achieved by unexpected turns of events which catch the reader off guard, amazing and amusing him; retardation, surprise ending, etc.

The sense of humour both on the part of the writer and that of the reader depends on the nature of the mind and awareness of national cultural specifications. It sometimes makes it difficult to detect humour in foreign literature.

HUMOR - overall discussion

1. Comment on the following forms of the humor types:

course, subtle, practical joke; brainteaser, jibe, irony, anecdote, epigram, black humor, satire, parody, witticism… Add to the list.

2. Explain what the following words mean:

ugliness, debasement, deformity, infirmity, shortcomings, imperfections… Extend the list.

3. In the humorous story you've read analyze the collision of two different frames of reference:

· metaphorical vs. literal

· professional vs. common sense logic

· incompatible codes of behavior

· the trivial vs. the exalted

· reasoning in opposite directions

· lofty form vs. flat-footed content

· deliberately distorted image of a person

· allegory

· parody

· ironic contrast

· play of words (pun)

Story 1. Mark Twain. How the Author was Sold in Newark

It is seldom pleasant to tell on oneself, but some times it is a sort of relief to a man to make a confession. I wish to unburden my mind now, and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the correct expression to use in this connection--never having seen any balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young gentlemen of the-----Society? I did at any rate. During the afternoon of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with tears in his eyes, this young man said, "Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more! Oh, if I could only see him weep!" I was touched. I could never withstand distress.

I said: "Bring him to my lecture. I'll start him for you."

"Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those parched orbs?"

I was profoundly moved. I said: "My son, bring the old party round. I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that will make him cry or kill him, one or the other." Then the young man blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of supernatural atrocity full at him!

Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.

The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water, and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last?"

I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the second row."

And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and dumb, and as blind as a badger!"

Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way for him to do?

Literary Interpretation

1. What place does Mark Twain have in the history of American literary humor?
2. How does the author make use of plot to create a humorous effect?
3. Who or what is the target of humour?
4. How is Twain's humour developed linguistically?
5. Analyze the use of literary conventions and devices to develop character and point of view in the short story.
6. Discuss the purposes and significance of literary humour.
7. Translate the text / the indicated passage into Russian/Belarussian (comment on the choice of translation techniques).
8. Write a brief annotation to the text.

Story 2. Saki. The Open Window

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.
"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.
"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.
"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."
"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.
"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"
"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - "

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.
"She has been very interesting," said Framton.
"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?"
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.
"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention - but not to what Framton was saying.
"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"
Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.
In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.
"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

Literary Interpretation

1. What made Saki (Hector Hugh Munro:1870 –1916) one of the original writers of humporous short stories?

2. Give a brief plot summary of the story focusing on the dramatic irony that the author intends for the readers.

3. What other types of irony are used in the story?

4. Give character sketches of Mr Nuttel and Vera. Are they humorous? Explain the choice of the author's means of characterization to create the necessary effect on the reader.

5. Who or what is the target of Saki's humour?

6. Comment on the author's use of plot structure techniques.

7. What imagery predominates in the story? Is it used to create a certain tone?

8. How do you perceive the narrator's voice? Is the author's attitude to the characters evident?

9. How well does the author use the principles of contrast and parallelism?

10. What genre of literature is used a an object of parody?

11. What is the story's message?

12. Translate the text / the indicated passage into Russian/Belarussian (comment on the choice of translation techniques).

13. Write a brief annotation to the text.