...'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.... Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene I
Probably no type of literature dates as quickly as humor. It is a tribute to the greatest writer in the English language that humorous scenes which he penned over 400 years ago still resonate with modern readers. Much humorous literature does not.
There are a number of reasons why this is so. Much humor is topical. Not being contemporaries of the writer, these topical references frequently are lost on us. But not always. A good annotated edition of an older humorous work often can restore some of this missing context, affording modern readers an opportunity to laugh as well:
Folks building a private library of literary humor quickly recognize that, because literary humor cannot rely on voice inflections and body language, it must rely on other devices to elicit laughs. One of the most obvious such devices is appropriate illustrations accompanying the text:
But most works of literary humor, like most works of literature in general, are rarely illustrated (especially nowadays), so other devices have to be utilized to elicit laughs. Among these are meiosis (understatement) and its counterpart, hyperbole; inappropriate response; metaphor; reductio ad absurdum; innuendo; and many more. We will examine representative examples of each of these over the next several days.
Folks seriously interested in building a private library of such works will find that many titles have been published which contextualize various types of literary humor:
These cover not only various devices (hyperbole, for example), but also literary humor specific to certain eras, locales or authors....
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