Download Humour analysis display

Is it literary? Why or why not?
What are the author’s intentions? What is s/he trying to do? Does s/he succeed?
As literary art, does the piece offer insights about the human condition? Does it inspire?
Does the piece resonate today or is it dated?
How would you situate this piece in its time and place?
Is it suitably well-crafted?
Is it humorous? Why or why not?
What is the author’s stance, or attitude, toward his/her subject?
(Ironic, satirical, bemused, amused, condescending)
What stylistic techniques does the author use to try to create humor?
(exaggeration, repetition, punning, incongruity, irony, satire)
Does the humor work today or is it dated?
Cognitive and Literary Theories of Humour
Cognitive Theories
Literary Theories
(Explanatory)
(Descriptive)
Psych Theories
Ling Theories
(Source: Martin)
(Source: Attardo, Martin)
Psychoanalytic (Freud)
Structuralist
Frye (Classical modes)
Aggression (Plato, Hegel)
Semantic Script (Raskin)
Koestler (Incongruity)
Arousal (Berlyne)
GTVH (Attardo)
Bakhtin (Carnivalesque)
Incongruity (Suls)
Discourse Analysis/Pragmatics
Rhetorical (Aristotle)
Reversal (Apter)
Semantic Distance
Walker/Dresner (Feminist)
Semantic Priming
Pye (PoMo)
Computational/Neurolinguistic
Cognitive
Relevance
Types
Comedy (Aristophanes’s The Frogs, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Black Comedy (Candide, Dr. Strangelove, M*A*S*H, Monty Python’s Flying Circus)
Fabliau (Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale)
Farce (Gogol, Don Quixote, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, The Marx Brothers)
Carnivalesque (Rabelais’s Gargantua et Pantagruel)
Irony (Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Friends, The Daily Show, 30 Rock, Modern Family)
Satire (Candide, Animal Farm, The Daily Show, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator)
Parody (Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” Scary Movie, Young Frankenstein, The Producers)
Pun (Joyce, Burgess, Shakespeare, Nabokov, Lewis Carroll, Pope)
Joke (Knock-knock, David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists)