Humor in Literature and Poetry

Romances present idealized and exaggerated worlds with plots focusing around what Joseph Campbell called “The Journey.” The journey does not have to be literal, but it does have to incorporate some psychological distancing from family or authority figures. Archetypal figures who play a role in journey stories include

1. a Hero on a Quest,

2. a Villain or a Trickster,

3. a Challenge, a Prohibition,

4. a Sacrifice,

5. a Sage,

6. and at last some kind of an Accomplishment or Success.

7. The characters can meet and interact with new people, which offers opportunities for new experiences and new humor.

8. On almost any trip there are bound to be complications which adds excitement to the plot.

9. There is also the epiphany that connects Heaven and Earth. This is why epiphanies often come to characters in high places like a mountain top, a tower, a lighthouse, a ladder, or a staircase. Examples in famously humorous stories include Jack’s beanstalk, Rapunzel’s tower, and Yertle’s stack of turtles in the Dr. Seuss book.

In the classical sense, “comedy” isn’t necessarily funny, but in contrast to “tragedy” it has a happy ending. High comedy (what we now call ‘smart comedy’ or ‘literary comedy’) relies for its humor on wit and sophistication, while low comedy relies on burlesque, crude jokes, and buffoonery. Jessica Milner Davies says that “whether it be English, medieval Dutch, Spanish, French, Viennese, Russian, improvised “commedia dell-arte,” or even Japanese kyògen or nò theater, farce is both the most violent and physically shocking of dramatic forms of comedy, but it is almost the most innocent in that unlike satire or burlesque it does not offend either individuals or society. In these stories, characters work to outwit the establishment or the upper class. The traditional Comedy of Manners was based on an unfair law, which the common person had to defeat. For example, in Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro, the unjust law was that the Lord of the Manor had the right to take the virginity of any woman marrying one of the Lord’s serfs.

A Picaresque Novel is a mock quest done by someone who does not have money, power, or prestige. The Picaro lives by his wits as he encounters various powerful eccentrics in his episodic adventures. Examples include Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, and Pickwick Papers. Here are seven characteristics associated with the picaresque novel:

1. The first-person account tells a part or the whole life of a rogue or picaro.

2. Rogues and picaros come from a lower social level, are of loose character, and if employed, do menial labor and live by their wit and playful language.

3. Picaresque novels are episodic in nature.

4. Picaresque characters do not mature or develop.

5. The story is realistic.

6. The language is plain (vernacular) and is filled with vivid detail.

7. Picaresque characters serve other higher class characters and learn their foibles and frailties, thus providing opportunities to satirize social castes, national types, and/or racial peculiarities.

Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYknOe7OluE

Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Wom6yOUYo

International Society for Humor Studies: http://www.humorstudies.org/