American literary humor 4219-SC029
The variety of American literary humor is reflected in the reading assignment of the course. Due to the relatively brief time assigned to the course, it excludes various types of humor present in American culture, such as the burlesque, comedies, vaudevilles, humorous films, TV comedy presentations, sitcoms (situation comedy), humerous magazines. There exist a Mark Twain Prize for American humor, an „American Humor Studies Association“ (founded in 1975) „to foster and to promote study, criticism of, and research in American humor in all its varied aspects“ (web 26. 11.2016). Since I enclose a calendar of reading assignments of the course, with titles of all classes, I see the „full description“ of the course dispensable, superfluous. The contents of the course is presented in the titles of the meetings with the students.
Course calendar and reading assignments
22.02 Introduction
01.03 Native American humor/Humor Indian
Assigned readings:
Vine Deloria, „Indian Humor“ in: Custer Died for Your Sins.
„Reservation Jokes“.
08. 03 Laughter in the colonial wilderness/Śmiech w kolonialnym pograniczu (puszczy)
Assigned readings:
Sarah Kemble Knight, from The Journal of Madam Knight.
Benjamin Tompson, „The Grammarians Funeral“; „On a FORTIFICATION At Boston begun by Women“.
Ebenezer Cook, The Sot-Weed Factor, or, A Voyage to Maryland.
Alexander Hamilton, from Itinerarium.
15.03 The humorous moralist/Humorystyczny moralista
Assigned readings:
Benjamin Franklin, „Silence Dogood Paper No. 7“; „The Speech of [Miss] Polly Baker“;
„An Edict of the King of Prussia“; Selection of maxims, aphorisms.
22.03 The Americanization of humor/Amerykanizacja humoru
Assigned readings:
Washington Irving: „The Art of Book-Making“.
Royall Tyler, The Contrast.
Suggested reading:
Hugh Henry Brackenidge, Modern Chivalry.
29.3. The rise of archetypes/Powstanie archetypów
Assigned readings:
James Russell Lowell, from The Biglow Papers, First Series;
Joel Chandler Harris, „The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story“ „Mr. Babbitt Grossly
Deceives Mr. Fox“.
05.04 The tall tale; tricksters, rascals, copperheads, and other types/Niewiarygodne opowiadania; spryciarze; łotry; węże
Assigned readings:
Thomas Bangs Thorpe, „The Big Bear of Arkansas“;
August Baldwin Longstreet, „The Horse Swap“; Johnson J. Hooper, „Simon Suggs
Attends a Camp Meeting“;
Petroleum V. Nasby, ‚Nasby shows why He should not be Drafted.“
12.04 The little known humorist/ Mało znany humorysta
Assigned readings:
Edgar Allan Poe, „The Devil in the Belfry“; „Loss of Breath“; „Lionizing“; „Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling“; „Spectacles“
„The Literary Life of Thingum Bob“.
19.04 The parodist and hoaxer/Parodysta i żartowniś
Assigned readings:
Herman Melville: Herman Melville, from Moby Dick: chapters:3, 4, 10, 16, 17, 25, 48, 64, 73, 83, 91, 100, 119.
26.04 The many faces of irony/Liczne oblicza ironii
Assigned readings:
Emily Dickinson, „Success is counted sweetest“ (67); „’Faith is a fine invention (185);
„What is—‚Paradise—„ (215; „Why—do they shut Me out of Heaven?“ (248);
„I’m Nobody! Who are you“ (288); „Much Madness is divinest Sense“ (435);
„This was a Poet“ (448); „The Bible is an antique Volume“ (1545); „Because
I could not stop for Death—„ (712); „In Winter in my Room“ (1670);
„To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,“ (1755).
10.05 Serious jesters and „black humorists”/Poważni żartownisie i „czarni humoryści”
Assigned readings:
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad. „Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog“ („The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County“).
Ambrose Bierce, from The Devil’s Dictionary.
17.05 Modern and postmodern humorists/Nowocześni i postmoderni humoryści
Assigned readings:
Robert Benchley, „Whoa!“
S. J. Perelman. „Nothing but the tooth“; „Dental or mental, I say it’s spinach“;
„A farewell to Omsk“.
James Thurber, „The Topaz cufflinks mystery“.
24.05 The therapeutic function of humor/Terapeutyczna funkcja humoru
Assigned reading:
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
31.05 African American humor/ Afro-Amerykański humor
The Book of Negro Humor; Langston Hughes
07.06 Exam
Type of course
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Having finished the course, the student learns the humorous varieties of American literature; the diverse American’s diverse relationship to his country and the world through the varieties of humorous relationships: lighthearted, jocular,vicious, permissive, mocking, ironic. The students knows the various types of humor in different literary genres: poetry, tale, nowel, deama. In presenting the works listed as assigned readings, he uses the various attributes of humor. He can explicate the contexts presented by the author. He learned the growing complexity of American literature in the historical perspective, including the history of humor in the United States, and enriches his knowledge of the country, its complex history.
Skills
The student ends the course with an improved skill of doinng research. He improved his ability of interpretation; explains the poetics of humorous works. He can identify the characteristic differences of particular types of humor. Improved the writing of papers on the themes mentioned in the syllabus, raised the quality of analysis. He recognizes the need of presenting a humorous work in the historical context of the country or a community. He improved or mastered the ability of writing scholarly texts. He can explain the reason(s) for writing humorous works. He realized the need for commenting presented papers in the class.
Social competences
The student is open to cooperation in the realization of the themes presented in the syllabus and the works listed. He participates in the interpretation of the delivered papers dealing with American culture. He assists colleagues in the preparation of reports/papers; has advanced competency in the perception of key factors molding the reality and history of the United States.
Bibliography
Additional readings:
Barth, John. The sot-weed factor.
Barthelme, Donald. One back, Dr. Caligari.
Buchwald, Art. Round up.
Carver, Raymond.
De Vries, Peter. Reuben, Reuben. I hear America swinging.
Heller, Joseph. Cach-22.
Lardner, Ring. How to write short stories.
Loos, Anita. Gentlemen prefer blondes.
Morton, Thomas. The New English Canaan (1637)
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five
Bibliography
Allen, Paula Gunn and Carolyn Dunn Anderson, ed. Hozho : Walking in Beauty : Native American of Inspiration, Humor and Life. Chicago, 2001.
Blair, Walter. Native American Humor. New York, 1960 (BUW; OSA)
Bloom, Harold (2010) Dark Humor, chapter On dark humor in literature
Budd, Louis J. and Edwin H. Cady, eds. On humor: The best from American literature. (1992).
Davis, Douglas M., ed. The World of Black Humor: An Introductory Anthology of Selections and and Criticism. New York: Dutton, 1967.
Friedman, Bruce Jay. Black Humor. New York, 1985.
Galloway, David. The Absurd Hero in American Fiction: Updike, Styron, Bellow, Salinger. 2nd ed. Univ of Texas Press, 1981
Gruber, Eva. Humor in contemporary native North American literature : reimagining nativeness. Rochester and New York, 2008.
Massey, John K., ed., The comic spirit in America. (1969).
Nilsen, Alleen Pace and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor. Phoenix, 2000.
O’Neill, Patrick „The comedy of entropy: The Contextx of Black Humour“. Canadian Review of Comparativve Literature 1983
Rourke Constance, American humor: A study of the national character (1931).
Rubin, Louis D. Ed. The comic imagination in American literature (1982).
Safer, Elaine B. The contemporary American comic epic : the novels of Barth, Pynchon,
Gaddis, and Kesey . Detroit, 1989.
Schulz, Max F. "Toward a Definition of Black Humor." Comic Relief: Humor in
Contemporary American Literature. Ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen. Urbana: Univ of Illinois Press, 1978
Scholl, Peter. „Garrison Keillor and the News from Lake Wobegon“. Studies in American
Humor, vol 4 no. 4 (winter) 18985/86.
Spalding, Henry O. Complied and edited. Encyclopedia of black folklore and humor. 1972
Walker, Nancy A., ed. What's so Funny? : Humor in American Culture , 1998
Weber, Brom, ed. An Anthology of American Humor. New York, 1962.
Yates, Morris W. The American humorist: Conscience of the twentieth century (1964)
Zebrowski, Julian. The Polish Culture in America. Miami, 1990. American Institute of Polish
Culture.
Zhou, Jingqiong. Raymond Carver’s Short Fiction in the History of Black Fiction. New York 2006.
The 50 funniest American Writers: An Anthology of humor from Mark Twain to the Onion/ According to Andy Borowitz. New York 2011
Garrison Keillor, More News from Lake Wobegon (listening and discussion)/Więcej Wiadomości z Jeziora Wobegon
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: