Comedy
-six necessities of comedy
- it must appeal to the intellect, not emotion
- must be mechanical
- inherently human, to remind us of our humanity
- must be relevant to the set of societal norms, where the readers is familiar with them
- the situation and its parts must be inconflict with those norms
- must be percieved as harmless or painless
Types of Comedy
-low comedy: lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal quarreling, fighting, noisy singing, buffoonery, drunkenness...blah blah etc.
-high comedy: pure or serious comedy, appeals to the intellect and arouses laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and displaying the follies of social manners
-burlesque: characterized by ridiculous exaggeration and distortion, switching expectation serious turned frivolous, frivolous made serious
-farce: light dramatic work in which a highly improbable plot, exaggerated character, and slapstick elements are used for humorous effect
-lampoon: broad satirical piece that uses ridicule to attack a person or group, a more pointed or aimed satire
-parody: parody is to literature as caricature is to art, making fun of a well known and/or original work
-satire: holding up to ridicule the follies and vices of a people or time
-slapstick: boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes
-travesty: presents a serious subject frivolously and reduces everything to its lowest level, always serious where as burlesque and parody don't need to be
The Comedic Ladder
-Comedy of Ideas
- characters argue about ideas like politics, religion, sex, marriage
- characters use their wit and clever language to mock their opponent in an argument
- subtle way to satirize people and institutions like political parties, governments, churches, war, marriage
-Comedy of Manners
- amorous intrigues among the upper classes
- focus is on witty language, clever speech, put downs are traded by the characters, ie: my lunch table
- society is often made up of cliques (exclusive) in crowd; everyone else, not incrowd
-Farce
- plot is full of coincidences, mistiming, mistaken identities
- characters are puppets of fate
- loss of identity because of birth, fate or accident
- sometimes they are twins separated unaware of their double; Twelfth Night
Low Comedy
- dirty jokes, dirty gestures, and sex are subjects of humor
- exaggeration or understatements are the extremes with a focus on physical - long noses, cross eyes, humped back
- slapstick, pratfalls, loud noises, physical mishaps, collisions, etc
Techniques of Comedy
-caricature: representation in which the subject's distinctive features are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic effect
-colloquialism: use of slang or informal language; regional dialects included
-deflation: an object assumes or is given elevated status and then is treated in such a way that the estimation of the object decreases
-disparagement: to speak of in a slighting way; some teachers.
-euphemism: a less offensive substitute for a generally unpleasant word; escort vs. hooker
-hyperbole: exaggeration or overstatement
-incongruity: surprising contrast that occurs through situation, image, allusion, character, diction, anachronism
-invective: harsh abusive language directed against a person or cause; bitterist of satire; tool of anger
-irony
- verbal - discrepancy between what is actually stated and what is really meant
- situational - discrepancy between what is expected and reality
- dramatic - discrepancy between what the reader or audience knows and the character knows
-knaves & fools: only rogues (knaves) and suckers (fools) in comedy
-litotes: understatement in which a thing is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite
-malapropism: an improper use of a word in which one word is replaced by another which resembles it (different meaning)
-non-sequitur: inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premise or evidence
-oxymoron: a group of contradictory terms suggesting a paradox; jumbo shrimp
-paradox: a statement that seems self-contradictory which upon further thought contains some degree of truth
-parody: a work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect or ridicule
-pun (zeugma): play on words based on the similarity of sound
-sarcasm: bitter language meant to hurt or ridicule something
-stereotyping:conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image
-understatement: when what is said falls short of the magnitude of whats being talked about
-wit: now often refers to clever uses of language to arouse laughter
No comments:
Post a Comment