Humour in American Literature and Culture 3301-LA2226
It is believed that humor along with the ability to narrate are the only truly human features. It is the capacity to laugh and to see the incongruous and the absurd that makes us human. This course is designed to help us understand the functioning of humor and laughter as well as to analyze the place of humor in American literature and culture. Why do we laugh? Why what some people find funny in others produces a smirk or even embarrassment? What is the difference between irony, parody, satire, burlesque or travesty? What are the major theories of humor? Are there ways to distinguish among various ethnic brands of humor in the U.S.? These are the issues I would like to address in this course.
We will start by building up a theoretical framework that will facilitate understanding the role of humor in literature and culture. Therefore the first classes will be devoted to the analysis of essays looking at humor from a theoretical standpoint. We will read essays by Freud, Bergson, Critchley and Morreall among others. Later on we will move on to the discussion of humor in American literature and culture beginning with Mark Twain, and ending with literary satirists of the twentieth century such as Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. We will also look at the use of humor in selected film comedies such as Charlie Chaplin’s, Modern Times, or Woody Allen’s, Annie Hall to conclude with the discussion of the stand-up comedy represented by such comedians as Richard Pryor, George Carlin or Louis C.K.
Type of course
Learning outcomes
K_W02 understand key terminology, well established methods and theories of linguistics, literary studies and culture studies within English studies
K_W03 describe methodology and recent developments in English literary studies and culture studies
K_W04 describe the relation between language, literature, and historical and cultural processes on an advanced level
K_U01 employ the terminology and methodological tools from linguistics, literary studies and culture studies
K_U02 employ the methodology of literary and culture studies within English studies, respecting the ethical norms and copyright law
K_U03 analyze linguistic, literary and cultural phenomena and draw generalizations on their basis with respect to the social, historical and economic context
K_K03 value responsibility for one’s own work and respect the work of others, adhering to the professional and ethical norms in various projects and other activities undertaken at work, voluntary services, etc.
K_K04 apply the skill to critically assess communicated content to think and act independently in various social situations
K_K05 function effectively in social and cultural interactions, through various forms and media, thanks to the ability to express oneself in a cohesive and lucid manner
K_K06 value cultural heritage and cultural diversity
Assessment criteria
Course Work:
Response Papers 60 percent
Presentations of a stand-up 20 percent
Presentation of either an essay, fiction or a film 20 percent
three absences are permited
Students taking classes have to demonstrate the knowledge of English at the B2+ level
retake session: response papers
Bibliography
Essays or book chapters:
Noel Carroll, Humor: A Very Short Introduction.
Simon Critchley On Humor
Richard Zoglin’s Comedy at the Edge
Megan Garber ‘How Comedians Became Public Intellectuals'
Nancy Walker “What is Humor? Why American Humor?”;
Judith Lee Yaross, “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous”
Sigmund Freud, “Humor”
Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, “Ethnic Humor: Subversion and Survival” in Nancy E. Walker ed. What’s so Funny?
Gerald Mast “Comic Films” in Nancy E. Walker What’s So Funny?
Jonathan Greenberg, Ch1 and ch2 from The Cambridge Introduction to Satire.
John Morreall, Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor
Fredrick Jameson, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
David Foster Wallace, David Foster Wallace "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction."
Alan Dundes, “A Study of Ethnic Jokes: the Jew and the Polack in the United States; recapitulation; all response papers due
Books:
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
George Schuyler, Black No More
Joseph Heller Catch 22
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Films:
Modern Times (1936, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Jo Jo Rabbit (dir. Taika Waititi, 2019)
Blazing Saddles (1974, dir. Mel Brooks)
Annie Hall (1977, dir. Woody Allen)
The Big Lebowski (1998, dir. Joel and Ethan Cohen)
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: