1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910454217303321

Autore

Ermida Isabel <1968->

Titolo

The language of comic narratives [[electronic resource] ] : humor construction in short stories / / by Isabel Ermida

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin ; ; New York, : Mouton de Gruyter, c2008

ISBN

1-281-99353-0

9786611993535

3-11-020833-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (274 p.)

Collana

Humor research, , 1861-4116 ; ; 9

Classificazione

EC 3930

Disciplina

808.3/1

Soggetti

Humor in literature

Short story - Authorship

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-256) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of tables and figures -- Foreword -- Chapter 1. The concept of humor: history, scope and issues -- Chapter 2. Linguistic resources of humor -- Chapter 3. Humor as a textual genre: from jokes to comic narratives -- Chapter 4. Structural principles of narrative humor -- Chapter 5. Pragmatics of the humorous narrative -- Chapter 6. A model of humorous narratives -- Chapter 7. Extending the analysis -- Backmatter

Sommario/riassunto

The book offers a comprehensive account of how humor works in short stories, by presenting a model of narrative comedy that is pragmatically as well as semantically, grammatically and stylistically informed. It is the first study to combine a sequential analysis of the comic short story with a hierarchical one, merging together horizontal and vertical narratological perspectives in a systematic way. The book covers the main areas of linguistic analysis and is deliberately interdisciplinary, using input from philosophy, sociology and psychology so as to touch upon the nature, motivations and functions of humor as a cognitive phenomenon in a social context. Crucially, The Language of Comic Narratives combines a scholarly approach with a careful explanation of key terms and concepts, making it accessible to researchers and



students, as well as non-specialists. Moreover, it reviews a broad range of historical critical data by examining the source texts, and it provides many humorous examples, from jokes to extracts from comic narratives. Thus, it seeks to anchor theory in specific texts, and also to show that many linguistic mechanisms of humor are common to jokes and longer, literary comic narratives. The book tests the model of humorous narratives on a set of comic short stories by British and American writers, ranging from Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy Parker, through Graham Greene and Corey Ford, to David Lodge and Woody Allen. The validity of the model is confirmed through a subsequent discussion of apparent counter-examples.