Establishing and Structuring Humorous Novels

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

For me, Mark Twain is the most humorous humorist that ever wrote humor.

I think part of the reason that he's humorous is that he constructs a plot that provides a sense of progress and a series of burlesques unified through character, setting, and situation. Often, the titles of his books themselves identify or suggest the conceit: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad.

For example, the idea for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (traveling back in time to set up a continuous contrast between the medieval and the modern) establishes the basis for sustained, continuous humor, satire, parody, and burlesque.

In addition (Twain usually progresses from general to specific), the chapters themselves of his novels suggest the same structure and the same elements: “Camelot,” “King Arthur's Court,” “Knights of the Round Table” . . . “The Eclipse,” “Merlin's Tower,” . . . “The Tournament” . . . .

Internally, each chapter is also structured:

Chapter I (Camelot): the countryside is described; a girl appears; the protagonist approaches the town; a detailed description of the town and several of its residents is presented; Chapter II (King Arthur's Court): The protagonist exchanges dialogue with an old man; the protagonist exchanges dialogue with a page; the protagonist and the page arrive at Sir Kay's castle; the narrator presents a philosophical conclusion (i. e., one of the novel's themes).

This threefold structure indicates, with increasing specificity, the sense of progress, which unifies the story while introducing topics for humor. By the time readers finish the story, the foibles of the novel's characters and the folly of their times (and their view of the world) will have been thoroughly examined, criticized, and lampooned.

In the actual paragraphs of the story, Twain uses many devices to spoof the targets of his humor, including mistaking Camelot for an “asylum”; similes (“as lonesome as Sundays,” “made him look like a forked carrot”); incongruous diction (“”her own merits in . . . respect” to being “a spectacle”); derisive adjectives (“windowless,” “wilderness of thatched cabins,” “crooked alleys,” “unpaved,” “troops of dogs and nude children,” “reeking wallow”); contrast (“a noble cavalcade . . . glorious” vs. “the muck and swine and naked brats”); evaluation (the old man's use of Middle English confirms his status, in the protagonist's eyes, as an inmate of the 'asylum”); personification (“comfort his very liver,” “let that shudder its way home”); metaphor (“he was pretty enough to frame”); incongruous description (“shrimp-colored tights”); and a play on words (“”he informed me he was a page,” but, the narrator says, “you ain't more than a paragraph”).

Twain's technique could be used to set up a variety of other opportunities for humor through such contrasts and conflicts between opposing types of characters:

• A genius among fools
• Hercules among the Amazons
• The experiences that occasion various proverbs
• A sane man on a ship of fools

Congress Moves to Repeal Presidents Day

copyright 2015 by Gary Pullman

Note: News parodies have become popular in recent years, as the Internet has allowed any and all to try their hands at the type of satire that, in the past, only a few, such as Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Art Buchwald could inflict upon the public. While not claiming for myself a place among such august company, I thought I'd give the genre a try myself, with this parody piece. After all, not all essays about serious matters have to be serious in tone.

If the U. S. Congress has its way, this year's Presidents Day may have been America's last.

“Maybe George Washington and Abraham Lincoln deserve a holiday in their honor, but more recent presidents sure as hell don't,” Senator Nanny Pelosi bitched.

“I couldn't agree more,” her colleague, Senate minority leader Hairy Reed groused.

This is one issue, it appears, that has bilateral support.

“Like the good senators from Californicate and Nirvana, I'm all for doing away with Presidents Day,” Speaker of the House John Boner complained.

“Me, too,” Senate majority leader Bitch McConner pouted. “Let's scrub it.”

The disgruntled Congressmen (and woman) listed a long string of presidential “abuses,” including Dick Nixon's lying about the Watergate break-in, Bill Clinton's soiling of Monica (“The Mouth”) Lewinsky's blue dress (and the Oval Orifice) with his presidential spermatozoa, and Barack Obummer's “countless half-truths and complete falsehoods” over the past seven years, which, to both Boner and McConner “seem like seventeen—or seventy,” Boner whined.


Obummer, Senator John McCane charged, should be denied the holiday on his mispronunciation, as commander in chief, of “corps,” which Obummer pronounced as “corpse-men.” The mispronunciation, in McCane's view, was “not accidental” and “suggested the president's disdain for American military personnel.”


Many of the nation's other chief executives' actions have brought disgrace on the country they serviced, the Congressmen (and woman) claim.


Presidents Day was originally Washington's Birthday, Pelosi pointed out, but the name of the holiday was changed, to steal the first president's thunder, when Presidents Day was made a federal holiday so that “all presidents would be honored, whether they deserved it or not,” Boner explained.


Before and since the hijacking of Washington's Birthday, presidential misconduct has embarrassed and humiliated the American people multiple times:

• Ulysses S. Grant's tenure as president was rife with the Black Friday scandal, corruption in the Department of the Interior, and the Whiskey Ring.
  
• In addition to his involvement in numerous extramarital affairs, Warren G. Harding gave his countrymen the Teapot Some Scandal, among others.
  
• The Pentagon Papers proved that LBJ and JFK “systematically lied” to the American people as they secretly escalated the Vietnam War by illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia.
  
• Under Clinton, in the Filegate Scandal, the FBI provided secret dossiers on Republicans against whom administrative officials sought political advantages.
  
• During W's administration, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars were forked over to private right-wing media to promote the president's unpopular policies. W also eroded individual liberty by signing the so-called Patriot Act, which, among other tings, has resulted in airport strip searched of American travelers, including infants and elderly, wheelchair-bound men and women.
  

One of the most-scandal-ridden administrations in the nation's history, however, is that of the current president, Barack Insane Obummer, who is associated with, among many others:

• The Veterans Administration scandal, the Benghazi fiasco, numerous lies concerning the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obummercare)
  
• The ATF Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal
  
• The Terrence Flynn scandal
  
• The all-expenses-taxpayer-paid Government Services Administration's four-day gambling spree in Las Vegas
  
• The IRS' illegal investigations of conservative political groups
  
• The Justice Department's unauthorized collection of Associated Press phone records and persecution of Fox News reporter James Rosen
  
• Attorney General Eric Holder's contempt of Congress charges
  
• The Pigford Scandal
  
• The Veterans Affairs two all-expenses-taxpayer-paid trips to Disney World
  
• Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sibelius' violation of the Hatch Act
  
• The government-funding of the private company Solyndra (which later went bankrupt, costing taxpayers millions of dollars)
  
• Environmental Protection Agency official Lisa Jackson posing as “Richard Windsor” in writing secret emails
  
• Failing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating white voters during the 2008 presidential election
  
• Attacking Libya without Congressional approval
  
• Making questionable end-runs around Congress on many occasions.
  

“I'm half blind,” Reed said, “but it's clear, even to me, that presidents don't deserve to be honored by a special holiday.”

Reed has joined his colleagues in support of a bill to eliminate Presidents Day and to replace it with Congress Day, “ a day,” Pelosi says, “that will live in infamy.”

How to Write a Parody the "Mad" Magazine Way

copyright 2014 by Gary L. Pullman

The way that Mad magazine develops a parody is to use a set of conventions that is common to all their satires of motion pictures, television series, and programs associated with similar audiovisual media. Each of these conventions include the absurd, so that object of the parody is ridiculed at every opportunity and in a variety of ways. In the process, through text and imagery, the parody makes frequent allusions to other television shows or artifacts of popular culture, which, ironically, has the paradoxical effect of grounding the parodied program in reality while, at the same time, emphasizing its fictional nature. Finally, the parody also often purposely confuses the lives of the fictional characters with those of the actors who portray them, further maintaining, while simultaneously differentiating, fact and fiction.

The parody begins with an introduction to the program that is being parodied. This introduction typically identifies the program's basic theme, or concept, and relates it to an ostensible purpose that is implied by the effect that the program has had on its medium, audience, or some other objective element. Often, the program's basic storyline is ridiculed, and the main actor—or the character whom he or she plays—is misrepresented in some manner—for example, his or her intentions may be misstated. These conventions are discernible in the following introduction to the magazine's parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series:

Every generation there is a Chosen One [concept]. A girl with three names whose destiny it is to revive a notorious box-office flop as a successful TV series [ostensible purpose]. For seven years she has rescued her supporting cast from melodramatic perils and lame plot twists [basic storyline]. But, now, in their time of greatest need, she will abandon them to pursue a feature film career of nauseating romantic comedies and abhorrent big-budget sequels [misrepresentation of main character's intent]. This girl is. . .

Using absurd surrogate names, the characters, lined up vertically, one after another, as if standing in a police line-up, then introduce themselves, speaking directly to the reader, as if each were soliloquizing before a camera; typically, their address identifies ironies or absurdities in their characters, their roles, or the series' conventions.

I'm Busty Bummers, and even though I'm 35, I'm still in my first year of college. I suffer from a rare aging disorder called “90210 syndrome!” [Buffy Summer's introduction pokes fun at the incongruity of a woman playing a character who is over twenty years younger than she, a convention common to television shows that feature supposedly teenage or young adult characters, such as 90210.]

I'm Pillow. I used to be a mousy computer nerd, but now I'm a mousy witch. [This quip ridicules the stereotypical nature of Willow Rosenberg as “mousy” and suggests that the show's assignment of a new persona to her, that of witch, has not made the character any less stereotypical: she remains as “mousy” as ever.]

I'm Busty's little sister YAWN. I get blamed for this show jumping the shark. But it's not my FAULT! Give me my own SPIN-OFF and I'll prove I'm a GREAT character! [This introduction includes fan criticism of the Dawn Summers character's ruination of the series—many fans considered her character not only unnecessary and unrealistic, even in a fantasy series, but supremely annoying as well; the introduction also alludes to the Buffy spinoff Angel, starring David Boreanaz. The words in capital letters imitate the character's tendency to whine.]

I'm Xanadu and I used to be the comic relief. Now I just sit around and get fatter every episode. [The character, Xander Harris, did provide much of the show's “comic relief” before writers sidelined him much of the time, as the show took on a darker tone, and the actor, Nicholas Brendon, who played him did gain some weight, a fact that the parody also addresses, suggesting that the character's relative idleness and the actor's weight gain are related to one another, the former causing the latter. The parody's rechristening of Xander as "Xanadu" incorporates an allusion to the fantastic world of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan," thus juxtaposing the popular culture of the television series to the classic culture of which Coleridge's poetry is part, which has the effect of further highlighting the absurdity of the television show.]

I'm Spoke—I'm an edgy vampire [again, a cliché is savaged] who has a love/hate relationship with BUSTY [a trite, melodramatic situation, involving a May-December, Romeo-and-Juliet relationship, is ridiculed]. After this show ends, at least I have a future in Vegas as a BILLY IDOL impersonator! [The character of Spike is modeled, in physical appearance, on the singer whom “Spoke” references. Las Vegas has been called the place where performers go to earn a living after their careers have died—an implicit allusion that is particularly apt for one of the living dead.]

I'm Busty's Watcher, Gello. In the time I've been WATCHING her, Busty has shrunk from a size 4 to buying all her clothes at Kids “R” Us! Now she makes ALLY MCBEAL look fat! [This statement alludes to Sarah Michelle Gellar's noticeable weight loss during the series' seven-year tenure—and to another televisions series that stars an all-but-anorexic actress, Calista Flockhart.]

Usually, amusing images are included in this panel, as if they were props or the actions of character actors who were included among the regular cast to provide comic relief. For example, both Busty and Yawn hold wooden stakes, and Pillow, who becomes a lesbian as well as a witch, has her hand around Buffy's waist. In the background, a cemetery headstone, complete with cross, is visible between Busty's legs. Xanadu, as much a nerd as Pillow, wears a Star Trek T-shirt. As he speaks of his love affair with Busty, Spoke makes the sign for “I love you.” Gello holds the thick volume that the actual series has associated with vampire lore, as a vampire, holding a Martha Stewart Cooking book, sprinkles salt on his shoulder, seasoning him to taste.

Following the opening panel, which runs across the top of both pages of the two-page spread, a series of smaller panels continues to poke fun at the program that is being parodied, often by capitalizing upon the conventions that the parody has made explicit.

For example, Busty, with wooden stakes strapped along the side of the suitcase she grips, is pursued by Gello, as, in the background, a terrified young woman flees from a bat that chases her. “Busty,” Gello calls, “where are you going? We need you!” [Obviously, to survive, a television series needs its protagonist.] “Forget it, Gello,” Busty replied. “I've been poking VAMPIRES with STAKES for seven years, and I'm SICK of it. I'm ready to stretch as an actress.” [the “poking” of “VAMPIRES with STAKES” alludes to Buffy's rather promiscuous sexual liaisons with the undead, including both Angel and Spike, or “Spoke.” Allegedly, the show's creator, Joss Whedon, and the other actors wanted to produce the series for one more season, but Gellar insisted upon leaving, saying she was tired of the series and wanted to try other roles in motion pictures, so her explanation, although appropriate to the fictional situation that the parody has created, once again, echoes reality, a characteristic of any parody.] Gello asks, “So, where are you going?” His question, a transition, sets up her ironic response, “I'm going to do SCOOBY DOO 2, so I can hurt MONSTERS with TORCHES.” [The change of roles, the parody, suggests will not “stretch” Gellar's acting ability in any way, because it is essentially the same sort of role as that which she has played, as Buffy, or “Busty,” for the past seven years.]

Gello's plea to Busty, in the next panel, uses absurdity to exemplify what he calls “reason,” an ironic parallel that is possible only in the fantastic (and absurd) world of the series that the Mad strip parodies: “Please listen to reason! This town is a gateway to HELL known as the SMELLMOUTH! Whatever shall we do if you LEAVE us?” Busty's reply, while not particularly amusing, reinforces the absurdity of the series' concept: “Oh, Gello, if you want to shut that stinking SMELLMOUTH, just call a PLUMBER! Or a good DENTIST!”

In the next panel, a vampire rides piggyback aboard a victim while Xanadu, having unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a flabby, hairy chest and belly, seeks a romantic encounter with his one-time fiancee, Anya Jenkins (“Anyawn,” in the parody. Like Buffy and Willow, Xander also availed himself of several sexual partners during the show's seven seasons, a plot device that was itself both stereotypical of youth and melodramatic in terms of drama. “Hey, Anyawn, I know we broke up last season and all, but whenever things look grim, I like to sneak off and make out. Whadda ya say?” Anyawn, aghast, exclaims, “Ugh! Sorry, Xanadu, but it looks like you put on FIVE POUNDS for every ONE that Busty's lost! Now, for God's sake, button your shirt!” Again, the parody addresses (and reinforces) an element—Brendon's weight gain—in the introductory panel; in the process, it alludes to the melodramatic episode in which Xander abandons Anya at the altar on the day of their intended marriage.

Busty addresses Yawn, advising her that, “As my long-lost little SISTER, you may be required to carry out my LEGACY!” One of the points of frustration among the show's viewers was the abrupt appearance, after three seasons, of Dawn, as Buffy's sister, a “lame plot twist” that was too much for them, even in a series as melodramatic as Buffy. Alluding not to the television show itself, but to Gellar's actual personal life, Yawn asks, “Does that mean I'll have to marry a bad actor [Freddie Prinze, Jr.], drop down to 80 pounds [a reference to Gellar's dramatic weight loss, to which Gello has already alluded], and such movies as Scooby Doobie Doo 2, Simply Irresistible, and The Grudge, Grudge 2, The Return, and Southland Tales, to name but a few such stinkers. “All that,” Busty agrees, “and SHAMPOO COMMERCIALS, too!” [Gellar “starred” in commercials not for shampoo, but for Mabelline cosmetics.] Obviously, Yawn fears fulfilling such a prophecy; she does not want to follow in her “sister's” career footsteps.

Next, a histrionic Busty, holding her hand above her head and waving it in a circle as she addresses Pillow and Gello, states, “And I suppose Pillow is off somewhere performing a spell to keep me from leaving the show.”

The last panel identifies another complaint, among both the series' viewers and critics (the addition of the lesbian subplot involving Willow, or “Pillow”) and pokes fun at another series, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and at a role that the actor Alyson Hannigan, who plays Willow, undertakes, as “band geek,” Michelle Flaherty, in the film American Pie 2, which includes faux lesbian activity similar to the gratuitous lesbianism in Buffy. Busty, a silhouette standing in the open doorway to Pillow's bedroom, where the witch lies with her girlfriend, declares, “You know, that whole plot” (or “lame plot twist,” of which the parody's introduction warns readers is typical of the Buffy series) “about you turning gay is a desperate bid for ratings!” As she cuddles with her lover, Pillow replies, “And it worked! Now I'll cast a new spell to get SABRINA THE TEEN-AGE WITCH to make out with me!” Pillow then begins to cast her spell, the wording of the incantation suggesting the absurdity of the spells that Willow frequently casts on Buffy while alluding to Hannigan's role in American Pie 2: “Incartus Fake-latinus Make-outus One Time At Band Camp.”

By definition, a parody is an imitation of a work, the purpose of which is to mock the original by trivializing its content, tone, style, and other attributes. Therefore, a parody identifies the elements of a work that seem to be absurd, and, often by exaggeration, underscore the absurdity of these elements. The first task, then, that a parodist has is to identify the absurd elements in the work that is to be parodied. In the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Mad parody focuses upon the series' fantastic concept, its “lame plot twists,” its melodramatic situations, its stereotypical characters, the ironic parallels between the fictional lives of the characters and the actual lives of the actors who portray them, the affinities between Buffy and other teen or young adult television series, and the reliance of sexual subplots, both covert and overt, heterosexual and homosexual alike, of the show to maintain its appeal among teen and young adult viewers. The appearance of the characters, as drawn by the Mad artists, are, as caricatures of the actors who portray these characters, itself parodic and complements, at times underscores, the text's verbal assaults upon the spoofed show's absurd excesses. The comic strip is, as Mad demonstrates, repeatedly in this and other parodies of movies and television series, particularly well-suited, as a linguistic-visual medium, for lampooning popular art forms.

Glossary of Terms

Over the years--and, by “years,” we mean centuries and, in fact, millennia-- humorists and comedians have employed a variety of techniques to get their readers or audiences to giggle, snicker, sniggle, chuckle, chortle, titter, and laugh. Some of the more common, defined, once more, courtesy of Webster’s dictionary, are the following.

A

Absurd: Inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense.*

Analogy: Drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect.

B

Burlesque: A form of COMEDY characterized by ridiculous exaggerations and distortion: the sublime may be made absurd; honest emotions may be turned to SENTIMENTALITY; a serious subject may be treated frivolously or a frivolous subject seriously. The essential quality that makes for burlesque is the discrepancy between subject matter and style. That is, a style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matter, or a style very nonsensical may be used to ridicule a weighty subject. . . . A distinction between burlesque and PARODY is often made, in which burlesque is a TRAVESTY of a literary form and parody a travesty of a particular work. It has been suggested that parody works by keeping a targeted style constant while lowering the subject, burlesque or travesty by keeping a targeted subject constant while lowering the style (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 74-75).

C

Comedy: A dramatic work in which the protagonist’s fortunes change for the better by the end of the story.

Comedy of Humours: The special type of REALISTIC COMEDY that was developed in the closing years of the sixteenth century by Ben Jonson and George Chapman and that derives its comic interest from the exhibition of CHARACTERS whose conduct is controlled by one characteristic or HUMOUR. Some single psychophysiological humour or exaggerated trait of character gave the important figures in the ACTION a bias or disposition and supplied the chief motive for their actions. Thus, in Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (acted 1598), which made
this type of PLAY popular, all the words and acts of Kitely are controlled by an overpowering suspicion that his wife is unfaithful; George Downright, a country squire, must be “frank” above all things; the country gull in town determines his every decision by his desire to “catch on” to the manners of the city gallant. In his “Introduction” to Every Man in His Humour (1599), Jonson explains his character formula thus:

Some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way.

(William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 110).

Comedy of Manners: A term designating the realistic, often satirical, comedy of the Restoration, as practiced by Congreve and others. . . . The type concerns the manners and conventions of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. The stylized fashions and manners of this group dominate the surface and determine the pace and tone of this sort of comedy. Characters are more likely to be types than individuals. Plot, though often involving a clever handling of situation and intrigue, is less important than atmosphere, dialogue, and satire. The dialogue is witty and finished, sometimes brilliant. The appeal is more intellectual than imaginative. Satire is directed in the main against the follies and deficiencies of typical characters such as fops, would-be wits, jealous husbands, coxcombs, and others who fail somehow to conform to the conventional attitudes and manners of elegant society. A distinguishing characteristic of the comedy of manners is its emphasis on an illicit love duel, involving at least one pair of witty and often amoral lovers (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111).

Comedy of Morals: A term applied to comedy that uses ridicule to correct abuses, hence a form of dramatic satire, aimed at the moral state of a people or a special class of people (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111).

Comedy of Situation: A comedy concentrating chiefly on ingenuity of plot rather than on character interest; COMEDY OF INTRIGUE. Background is less important than ridiculous and incongruous situations, a heaping up of mistakes, plots within plots, disguises, mistaken identities, unexpected meetings, close calls (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 111-112).

Court Comedy: Comedy written to be performed at a royal court. . . . Characteristics include: artificial plot; little action; much use of mythology; pageantry; elaborate costuming and scenery; prominence of music, especially songs; lightness of tome; numerous and often balanced characters (arranged in contrasting pairs); style marked by wit, grace, verbal cleverness, quaint imagery; puns; prose dialogue; witty and saucy pages; eccentric characters such as braggarts, witches, and alchemists; much farcical action; and allegorical meanings sometimes in characters and actions (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 125).

D

Double-entendre: A word or expression admitting of a double interpretation, one of which is often obscure or indelicate. Mae West was a master of this device. “I used to be Snow White,” she once quipped, “but then I drifted.”

E

Euphemism: An inoffensive expression that is substituted for one that is considered offensive.

Exaggeration: The act of making something more noticeable than usual; making [something] to seem more important than it really is.

Extravaganza: A fantastic, extravagant, or irregular composition (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 209).

Eye Dialect: The misspelling of a word to suggest dialect. . . . In the sentence, “Ah cain’t kum raht naow,” “kum” is an eye dialect spelling (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 210).

F

Farce: A dramatic piece intended to excite laughter and depending less on plot and character than on improbable situations, the humor arising from gross incongruities, coarse wit, or horseplay. Farce merges into comedy, and the same play (e. g., Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew) may be called by some a farce, by others a comedy (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 213).

Fool: A court jester; in King Lear, Shakespeare labels this clown “the all licensed fool,” referring to the tradition that allowed jesters to speak frankly to the king or queen without fear of reprisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor (Pullman).

Framework Story: A type of narrative in which the main story is sandwiched between a prologue and an epilogue (Pullman).

H

High Comedy: Pure or serious comedy as contrasted with LOW COMEDY. High comedy appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and by displaying the follies of social manners. The purpose is not consciously didactic [educational] or ethical, though serious purpose is often implicit in the satire that is frequent in high comedy. Emotion, especially sentimentality, is avoided. If people make themselves ridiculous by their vanity or ineffective by their conduct or blind adherence to tradition, high comedy laughs at them. . . . Its higher enjoyment demands detachment (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 256).

I

Intrigue Comedy: A comedy in which the major interest is in complications resulting from scheming by one or more characters (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 279).

Irony: Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs (Pullman).

Dramatic Irony: (Theater) irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.

Situational Irony: The incongruity that results when a later situation upsets the expectations set up by an earlier situation.

Verbal Irony: The incongruity that results when what is said is the opposite of what is meant.

J

Juxtaposition: The act of positioning close together (or side by side) (Pullman).

L

Low Comedy: Low comedy has been called “elemental comedy,” in that it lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner and has little intellectual appeal. Some features are: quarreling, fighting, noisy singing, boisterous conduct in general, boasting, burlesque, trickery, buffoonery, clownishness, drunkenness, coarse jesting, wordplay, and scolding (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 303).

M

Malapropism: The unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.

O

Oxymoron: Conjoining contradictory terms (as in `deafening silence').

Onomatopoeia: Using words that imitate the sound they denote.

P

Parody: A composition that imitates somebody's style in a humorous way. See “Travesty.”

Pun: A humorous play on words; "I do it for the pun of it"

Punch Line: The point of a joke or humorous story. (Mark Twain called the punch line the story’s “snapper.”) (Pullman)

R

Realistic Comedy: Any comedy employing the methods of REALISM but particularly that developed by Jonson, Chapman, Middelton, and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. It is opposed to the ROMANTIC COMEDY of the Elizabethans. It reflects the general reaction in the late 1590s against extravagance as well as an effort to produce an English comedy like the CLASSICAL. This realistic comedy deals with London life, is strongly satirical and sometimes
cynical, is interested in both individuals and types, and rests on observation of life. The appeal is intellectual and the texture coarse (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 431).

Romantic Comedy: A comedy in which serious love is the chief concern and source of interest. . . . Characteristics commonly found include: love as chief motive; much out-of-door action; an idealized heroine (who usually masks as a man); love subjected to great difficulties; poetic justice often violated; balancing of characters; easy reconciliations; and happy ending (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 455).

Running Gag: A humorous theme or situation that frequently snowballs as it is repeated and varied over time (Pullman).

S

Satire: Witty language used to convey insults or scorn.

Satire: A work or manner that blends a censorious attitude with humor and wit for improving human institutions or humanity. Satirists attempt through laughter not so much to tear down as to inspire a remodeling. If attackers simply abuse, they are writing invective; if they are personal and splenetic, they are writing SARCASM; if they are sad and morose over the state of society, they are writing IRONY or a JEREMIAD. As a rule, modern satire spares the individual and follows [Joseph] Addison’s self-imposed rule: to “pass over a single foe to charge whole armies.” Most often, satire deals less with sinners and criminals than with the general run of fools, knaves, ninnies, oafs, codgers, and frauds. . . .

. . Before the Revolution, American satire dealt chiefly with the political struggle. . . . Shortly after the Revolution, . . . [satire] attacked domestic political difficulties and the crudities of our frontier. . . . In the twentieth century. . . In America. . . [writers] commented satirically on human beings and their institutions. Satire is of two major types: formal (or direct) satire, in which the satiric voice speaks, usually in the first person, either directly to the reader or to a character in the satire, called the ADVERSARIES [a sort of straight man]; and indirect satire, in which the satire is expressed through a narrative and the characters who are the butt are ridiculed by what they themselves say and do. Much of great literary satire is indirect; one of the principal forms of indirect satire is the MENIPPEAN (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 464-465).

Formal satire is fundamentally of two types, named for its distinguished classical practitioners: Horatian is gentle, urbane, smiling; it aims to correct by broadly sympathetic laughter; Juvenalian is biting, bitter, angry; it points with contempt and indignation to the corruption of human beings and institutions.

Addison is a Horatian satirist, [Jonathan] Swift a Juvenilian (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 464-465).

Sentimental Comedy: . . . sentimental comedy became very weak dramatically, lacking humor, reality, spice, and lightness of touch. The characters were either so good or so bad that they became caricatures, and plots were violently handled so that virtue would triumph. . . . The sentimental comedy sacrificed dramatic reality in its effort to instruct through an appeal to the heart. The domestic trials of middle-class couples are usually portrayed: Their private woes are exhibited with much emotional stress intended to arouse the spectator’s pity and suspense in advance of the approaching melodramatic happy ending (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 477-478).

Simile: A figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with `like' or `as').

Situation Comedy: A humorous drama based on situations that might arise in day-to-day life.
Slapstick: Boisterous comedy with chases and collisions and practical jokes.

Straight Man: The partner in a stand-up comedy act or a situation comedy whose innocent or rational statements set up the comedian’s humorous responses or comments; George Burns was a straight man to his wife, comedienne Gracie Allen, just as Dick Smothers was a straight man to his brother, fellow comedian Tommy (Pullman).

Synecdoche: A trope [figure of speech] in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part. To be clear, a good synecdoche should be based on an important part of the whole and, usually, the part standing fro the whole ought to be directly associated with the subject under discussion (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 513).

T

Through Line: The series of aims that, united, propel a character forward in his or her effort to attain a more complex goal.

Tone: The quality of something (an act or a piece of writing) that reveals the attitudes and presuppositions of the author

Travesty: Writing that by its incongruity of treatment ridicules a subject inherently noble or dignified. . . . Travesty may be thought of as the opposite of the MOCK EPIC, because the latter treats a frivolous subject seriously and the travesty usually presents a serious subject frivolously. . . . In general, PARODY ridicules a style by lowering the subject; travesty, BURLESQUE, and CARICATURE ridicule a subject by lowering the style (William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, 529).

U

Understatement: A statement that is restrained in ironic contrast to what might have been said.

* Unless otherwise indicated, definitions are from Webster’s dictionary, a work in the public domain.

Humorous Techniques: Mark Twain

Copyright 2009 by Gary Pullman

Mark Twain’s humor involves every technique known to humorists: absurdity, analogy, burlesque, exaggeration, eye dialect, farce, high comedy, low comedy, irony, parody, puns and wordplay, satire, slapstick, travesty, understatement, and others. His work cannot be understood without a good knowledge of the vocabulary of humor.

He remains unmatched by other humorists. A study of his work is a must for anyone who aspires to writing humor. Many of Twain’s books are travelogues or contain generous passages that involve long journeys by one or more characters. A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are some of his major literary works that are either based upon or include domestic or foreign travel.

In his actual life as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Twain traveled frequently, both in the United States and abroad; his characters frequently did the same. The humorists’ journeys allowed him to compare and contrast the habits and customs of the denizens of one region of the country with those of the residents of another region of the country or the habits and customs of foreigners with those of Americans.

His travels were occasions for him to expose the glaring differences between the claims of travel guidebook authors and his own actual experiences as in visiting them as an unbiased and objective observer.

His voyages also permitted Twain to lampoon local traditions, beliefs, institutions, people, languages, art, and religions as he traveled through Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The expeditions themselves unified his sketches and essays, providing a needed backbone for his pieces and allowing his tone to range from whimsical to irate, from appreciative to annoyed, from delighted to outraged.

Sometimes, the travels that Twain’s characters undertook were fanciful, as in “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” “Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes,” and Satan’s visit to paradise in A Pen Warmed Up in Hell. These excursions were journeys of the mind through theological, philosophical, and social landscapes, constituting examples of high comedy with a more intellectual than sentimental or moral perspective and concern.

Another of Twain’s techniques was to evaluate the past through the eyes of the present. By having a character from nineteenth-century America travel into the past, visiting King Arthur’s Court, he could judge the persons, places, and things of the past, including the hypocrisies and abuses that resulted from and were maintained by the class distinctions between the nobility and the peasantry and the sanctimony and fraudulence of a greedy and politically entrenched clergy. At the same time, he could contrast modern Yankee ingenuity with medieval technology and hardheaded rationalism and realism against superstitious beliefs and the Middle Ages’ aristocracy’s and clergy’s fondness for fantasy.

Much of Twain’s humor also resulted in mistaken identities or masquerades. When a prince and a pauper trade places, each learns how the other lives and, at the same time, Twain provides himself with the opportunity of criticizing both the abuses of power and the conditions that sustain poverty and misery among the peasantry (a stand-in, perhaps, for the lower classes of his own day and ours). 

Likewise, when Huckleberry Finn poses as a girl whose true gender is surmised by the old lady whom he tries to deceive, Twain suggests that much of one’s identity, including his or her gender, is affected, consisting of mere convention, tradition, and habit which are learned rather than innate. The true self is the will, Twain suggests, as it is exercised in moral deliberation, for it is at the climax of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that the protagonist is faced with the decision to do the right thing, as both church and state dictate, and report Jim’s whereabouts to a mercenary posse or to remain loyal to his friend. This revelation of the true self would not be possible in the novel had Twain’s humor not first established both the goodness of Huck (and Jim) and the wickedness of the society in which he lives and the corruption of the callous institutions that are supported by this society. Next: A Glossary of Terms