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Exploring Comedy, Humor, and Irony in Literary Theory

Delve into the multifaceted world of comedy, humor, and irony in literary theory. Uncover the elusive definitions, origins, and manifestations of humor and irony, including incongruity, wit, verbal irony, and dramatic irony.

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Exploring Comedy, Humor, and Irony in Literary Theory

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  1. Difficult issues Humor and Irony

  2. What do we mean by humor? Or humorous? • Do we mean “comic?” • Do we mean “funny?” • Do we mean “witty?”

  3. The facts:The fact is we mean all of them at different times and in different situations. • In literary theory and criticism, no one has ever been able to provide a widely applicable and widely accepted definition of comedy or humor. • Here are some attempts at defining COMEDY • Situations in which some are amused and led to feel superior to others • The situations which elicit our delighted attention rather than profound concern • A situation with a happy ending

  4. From what does humor arise and what is it? • Incongruity • The unexpected • Actions intended to be funny • Words which say the opposite of what is expected • Wit or wittiness; clever use of language • A joke played on someone As you can see, it’s hard to find an umbrella term to either include all or separate classes of humor.

  5. Irony • One literary feature that is associated with and sometimes produces humor is IRONY. • An easy way to keep track of irony and identify it is to remember that it is always BI-POLAR----IT ALWAYS INVOLVES TWO 2 2= say one thing, mean another 2= expect or intend one thing, another happens22

  6. Two main kinds of irony • In VERBAL IRONY, we say one thing and intend or mean another • In DRAMATIC OR SITUATIONAL IRONY, one thing is expected or intended, something else happens • And DRAMATIC IRONY is also used to describe the situation in drama when the audience knows something characters on stage do not.

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