Literary Humanism Research Articles

La escritura cómico-seria de Augusto Monterroso

"This essay starts with the study of previous criticisms to make a new proposal for reading the novel Lo demás es silencio by Augusto Monterroso and this search is oriented towards the reestablishment of its links with the ancient tradition of comic-serious or humorous literature, in particular with Menippean satire. Laughter is the axis around which the poetics of the text is built, but I try to see its main features, parodies, ironies, games, satires in the novelistic whole and always in relation to the problem of the literary genre (the composition of a novel based on multiple genres that it incorporates), the struggle between orality-writing, high culture-popular culture, the deep critical sense that beats and the significance of the reflection on the intellectual and academic exercise that the work elaborates.Keywords: Poetics; laughter; menippea; parodies; genre"

Investigating the role of dark personality traits in how people appreciate, share, and censor black humour in online settings

ABSTRACT People find humour in the darkest and most tragic situations. However, there is remarkable interpersonal variability when it comes to setting the so-called limits of humour. We examine how the Dark Tetrad personality traits (DT4; Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) relate to responses to black humour jokes in online settings. A community sample of 745 adults completed the Short Dark Triad and the Assessment of Sadistic Personality inventories before rating a set of ‘black’ and neutrally humourous jokes in terms of their (a) appreciation (fun/offence), (b) likelihood of sharing, and (c) censoring them on social networks (e.g. Twitter/Facebook). After controlling for common variance, everyday sadism emerged as the strongest DT4 predictor of black humour preferences. This type of dark personality was uniquely associated with higher fun and sharing, and lower offence and censorship of black humour jokes. Machiavellianism was related to negative levels of black humour censorship and offence, whereas the opposite associations were observed for narcissism. Yet, the DT4 only showed rather modest amounts of shared variance regarding responses to black humour jokes, suggesting that interpersonal callousness is insufficient to account for the complexity of black humour interposal variability. We discuss the findings with respect to earlier humour literature.

A brief analysis of Guy Ritchie’s postmodernist style in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Black comedy is not a strictly critical concept of literary theory, but with the application of postmodernism in movies, the application of black humor in black comedy subverts the traditional way of humor. As early as the 5th century BC in Greece, comedian Aristophanes created literary works with humorous black color. In the 1960s, the publication of Friedman’s short story collection Black Humor marked the formal birth of black humor literature. (Thompson Bordwell 78) After the popularity of this school for several years, its influence penetrated the film field. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels by Guy Ritchie is a typical representative of contemporary black comedy movies.

“Taking Comedy Seriously”: Humour in Lisa McGee’s Girls and Dolls

Laughter in the midst of tragedy can be one of life’s most disturbing, cathartic and enlightening experiences, a maxim experienced in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, one of the most painful periods of Irish history. Northern Irish playwrights were acutely aware of this when dealing with violence in their plays and so, however grim the events they depicted, the comic element was very much present. After the Good Friday Agreement, along with the change in the political situation in Northern Ireland, there was a generational change in the theatre. What seems to characterise this new wave is the ironic distance taken towards the sectarian divide and the consequences of the conflict on Northern Irish society, which is revealed above all in their use of humour. Lisa McGee, one of the most important representatives of the new generation thanks to the popularity of her television series Derry Girls, had already shown her maturity in her 2006 play Girls and Dolls, performed by Tinderbox the same year. McGee mixes the tragic and the comic to present the terrible consequences of childhood trauma alongside the violence of the late Troubles, while raising questions about guilt, the meaning of friendship and the subtle ways in which violence affects us. This article aims to analyse the different uses of humour employed by McGee to deal with tragic episodes and their theatrical effect, drawing on the existing research on humour in literature and McGee’s own observations given in an interview with the author on 3 March 2023.

A Study of the Contract Spirit in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

As a famous playwright and one of the most remarkable literary figures in Britain and the world, Shakespeare is the master of humanist literature in the European Renaissance. The Merchant of Venice is one of his the most representative of works. In this play, a conflict arose from different laws: that is Roman law and Christian law. Shakespeare depicts two laws together perfectly. The spirit of contract and Shakespeare’s humanist ideas are profoundly reflected throughout the play. Shakespeare achieved his desired humanist sentiment while complying with the social and legal system of Venice. The spirit of contract plays quite an important role in social relations. This paper will explore the spirit of contract from three aspects in The Merchant of Venice: family relationships, individual relationships, and societal and individual relationships. It aims to analyze the essence of Shakespeare’s contract spirit, understand the Western countries in the dialectical way and recognize the spiritual essence of Western people.

„Bamberger Zyklus“ von Albrecht von Eyb: die Schaffung der humanistischen Literatur in Deutschland um die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts

Albrecht von Eyb (1420–1475) — was a canon, lawyer, and writer, one of the first northern humanists of the 15th century. Eyb went down in the history of German literature primarily as the author of a treatise on marriage (Ehebüchlein, 1472) and as the first translator of Plautus’ comedies (part of Spiegel der Sitten, 1474). These significant works were preceded by the first humanist textbook of rhetoric written in Germany (Margarita poetica, 1459), which was the result of a 15-year stay in Italy and acquaintance with the humanist culture of the time. This article studies a cycle of Latin works (1451), Eyb’s first attempt at writing, which were later partially included in his Margarita. The four Latin opuscula, which I call here the ‘Bamberg Cycle’, were composed during Eyb’s one-year visit in Bamberg, when he was forced to interrupt his studies for a while to secure an income from his prebenda. The works of the cycle are united by the young author’s ambition to imitate humanist literature of his time, from which he borrows not only themes but also form. While it remains impossible to identify the precise audience for these works, or the reason that prompted Eyb to write them, a closer look at these works-exercises, which remain in the shadow of the author’s more successful works, allows us to trace the ways in which the ancient and humanist heritage was received and adapted. Thus, the works of the ‘cycle’ become important material not only for the study of Albrecht von Eyb’s writings, but also for the formation of humanist identity in mid-15th-century Germany, at a time when the institutionalisation of the movement and its further flourishing were only just emerging.

Are humorous frontline employees hotels’ secret weapons? Investigating when and why employee sense of humor promotes service performance

Despite the growing efforts devoted to exploring humor, the extant humor literature neglects the impact of employee sense of humor in the workplace, especially in the hospitality industry, an important yet understudied context. Based on person–environment fit theory, our research examines why and when employee sense of humor can influence frontline hospitality employees’ service performance. Our multi-wave research of 232 frontline hospitality employees in two Chinese hotels unveils that employee sense of humor promotes service performance by enhancing person–service job fit. Moreover, customer contact frequency strengthens the direct impact of employee sense of humor on person–service job fit and the indirect effect of employee sense of humor on service performance through person–service job fit. Our research underlines the pivotal role of humorous frontline employees in hospitality organizations.

The imaginary doctor and his speech mask in the works of A.P. Chekhov and in Russian humorous literature at the end of the 19th century

The proposed study delves into the depiction of an imaginary doctor in mass humor during the late 19th century and in Chekhov’s early work. Its aim is to provide an explanation for Chekhov’s innovative humor, which stands out in comparison to that of his contemporaries. The work’s scientific novelty lies in the clarification of the concept of “speech mask in literature”. This refers to a hybrid of two languages, one inherent to the hero and the other appropriated from someone else, presented in a dialogic manner. Chekhov’s contemporaries such as Leikin, Amfiteatrov, and Shcheglov created simplistic comic scenarios in their works. The intentions of these authors were aimed solely at entertaining and distracting readers from their daily worries. Chekhov takes a complex stance on mass humor. On one hand, he must adhere to its demands in order to publish his stories in magazines. On the other hand, he subverts existing conventions by complicating his heroes’ speech characteristics through a speech mask. Chekhov not only entertains his readers, but also provides depictions of provincial customs and various social types. The image of the doctor in Chekhov’s mature works is ambivalent and only indirectly related to the imaginary doctor from his humorous pieces.

Retranslations of World Fairy Tales and Western Novels by XU Zhuodai

From the 1910s to the early 1920s Xu Zhuodai translated many fairy tales from around the world and Western novels into Chinese, via Japanese translations. His “World Fairy Tales” series, based on the “Otogibanashi” series by Iwaya Sazanami, were integral to the development of the Zhonghua Book Company, and represented an important milestone in China’s initial evolution of children’s literature. His translations of Western prose texts, including short stories by world-renowned authors such as Tolstoy, Maupassant, and Mark Twain, as well as long detective novels by the popular French writers Maurice Leblanc and Fortuné du Boisgobey, were based on Japanese translations such as those in “Various Comic Novels” by Sasaki Kuni. These translations of fairy tales and other texts reflect Xu Zhuodai’s concern for education and his love of humorous literature. How the translation of foreign literature influenced Xu Zhuodai’s literary output is a topic worth exploring in the future.

Интертекстуальные включения как средство создания комического эффекта (на материале смеховой литературы Древней Руси XVII в.)

This study aims to determine the role of intertextual elements in creating a comic effect in the 17th century Russian satires. Two novels representing the humorous literature of the 17th century Russia serve as the material of the research: The Tale of Drunkard and The Tale of the Peasant’s Son. Medieval culture is based on Christianity with the biblical text at its core. Intertextual elements represented by biblical allusions and quotes are important elements in the plot and composition of the texts under research. The results of the analysis in terms of lexis and stylistics show that the comic effect created by intertextual elements is based on the contrast of modalities between the source and target texts, which is achieved due to the antithesis “heavenly/earthly”. Despite the fact that the texts of the Bible have different artistic modalities, the episodes of the Old and New Testaments quoted in the texts in question do not possess satirical modality per se, which results in a conflict that develops between the target and the source texts, the comic effect being driven by this conflict. On the level of the language it is reflected in lexical units with different stylistic marking being constantly used within one sentence or in adjacent sentences. Each biblical allusion or quote contains Church Slavonic lexemes, which have solemn and sublime marking. In parodies on the biblical text allusions and quotes acquire new lexical environment, in particular, the Church Slavonic vocabulary is substituted by commonplace words, which leads to the conflict of modalities, and, consequently, creates a comic effect.

Provincial town as a spatial model in the satirical and humorous literature

The article deals with the artistic functions of local spatial models in the Russian satirical and humorous prose of the 20th century. It gives an idea of the typology of comic evaluation objects (character, situation, event, space). Particular attention is paid to the city as a multidimensional cultural text, as a universal metaphor for the state world order. The work reveals a contradiction between the real scale of the county town and the ridiculously grandiose ambitions of its inhabitants. The article discusses the semantics of the province objective world in the satirical and humorous prose, the semantic content of distinguishing between one's own and another's. In this respect, the satirists and comedians development of the humorous specific technique is essential (the motives of rumor, the introduction of imaginary figures, playing with scales, elements of mystification).

Freedom Delimited: An Analysis of Humanist Manifestos

Freedom is ambiguous and elusive. Context is useful for delimiting this ideal, though the notion of delimited freedom is itself paradoxical. Humanism, with its emphasis on humans as the basis of inquiry and understanding, places significance on self-defined pursuits of meaning and happiness. Freedom is essential to that endeavor. Given the centrality of freedom to humanist philosophy, an analysis of a strategic subset of their major writings and manifestos holds potential for unlocking insights about freedom. An author-created, corpus of humanist manifestos was collected, comprised of twelve texts from three organizations. Specifically, the corpus contains documents from the following organizations: the American Humanist Association (n = 3), Humanists International (n = 7), and the Center for Inquiry (n = 2), with publications ranging from the year 1933 to 2022. Frequency analyses of words of merit provided context for the centrality of freedom in humanist literature. The term freedom was analyzed in terms of time, organization, and functional form to determine the degree of consistency in usage. These insights make explicit what was ambiguous and provide a foundation from which individuals and organizations can articulate and pursue the type of humanist freedom defined in their literature.

Blindness as a Physical Disability and Humorous Literature Shaped Around Blinds in Classical Arabic Culture

Klasik Arap edebiyatında görme kusurlarına ilişkin aktarımlar içerisinde en yoğun malzemeyi âmâ figürü ve körlük teması etrafında kurgulanan rivayetler oluşturur. Bu rivayetlerin muhteva ve yapısına bakıldığında bir kısmının mizahi bir formda kaydedildiği, bazısının üretiminde ise hiciv, teşbih, mesel, ironi, tahkir vb. kullanılarak mizahi bir yaklaşım sergilenmediği görülür. Her dönem ve toplumda olduğu gibi kadim dönem Arap toplumunda da savaş, kavga, bakımsızlık, genetik rahatsızlıklar vb. sebeplerle hiç de azımsanmayacak bir sayıya ulaşan âmâ figürü, hem nazım hem nesir ürünlerinde sık sık edebiyat ve mizaha konu olmuş, yaratıcı şair ve nesir yazarları sayesinde komik hikâyelerin oluşmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Bu makale çalışmasında, son derece insani bir durumun -körlük engelinin- bilhassa anekdotik yönü üzerinde durulmuştur. Çalışmanın giriş kısmında Arap dilinde “kör” anlamına gelen kavramlar zikredildikten sonra konuyla ilgili literatür tanıtımı yapılmış, ardından klasik kaynaklarda âmâlara dair kayda geçen rivayetler aktarılarak bunların ışığında Müslüman toplumlarda yaşayan körlerin durumlarına ilişkin tespitlere yer verilmiştir.

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Tongue Cut Off

The paper analyses Vesna Parun’s humorous literature - satirical poetry and short forms such as aphorisms and epigrams - from the perspective of recent theoretical elaborations of humour and the comic. The interpretation is based on the presumption that the author’s poetic humour is a kind of political event that can put pressure on power systems in various areas of human life. It encourages readers to question the supposedly unquestionable worldviews, values, boundaries, and authorities. Since Vesna Parun's humorous literature produces both linguistic and social scandal, it is read as a world-creating linguistic event that aims e.g., to reorganise public opinion, disturb the common knowledge or so called ideologies of seriousness.

Renaissance humanism in the age of the Jagiellonian kings in Hungary (1490–1526)

AbstractThe present study offers a re-evaluation of literary production in Hungary under the Jagiellonian kings Wladislas II and Louis II. Traditionally, the literary works produced in this period have been contrasted to the blossoming of humanist literature under King Matthias, and disregarded in many respects. The aim of this study is to make a survey of the main authors and other agents of the literary culture of this period and to stress that this age experienced an unseen growth and expansion in late medieval and humanist scholarly and lay culture. While János Horváth called the authors of this period “humanists with party allegiances”, I argue that their stronger “party allegiance” is, in fact, the direct result of the steady growth in the number of intellectuals with a modern, humanistic educational outlook, and of a less centralized state.

A new approach to the stylistic analysis of humour

This article presents a new model of humour that can be used in the successful analysis of how and why literature can be found humorous. It deconstructs the theory that the perception of incongruity leads to the recognition of humour, proposing instead that the relationship between humour and incongruity is, in fact, the reverse of that generally assumed. I propose that humour is a process through which the familiar is brought to attention. One way this can occur is by drawing attention to the unnoticed contrasts between objects, making the familiar appear incongruous. The process can be modelled as a subjective construal (Langacker, 2008) in which the participants, and the process itself, are made prominent. This draws attention to the relationship between participants and to their shared experience of the world. I present an illustrative case study of subtle literary humour with an analysis of a passage from the short story ‘The Mouse’ by Saki (1910), demonstrating that, by modelling humour in the way I propose, it can be successfully explained using frameworks already in use in stylistic investigation.

The effects of benevolent vs. corrective humor on interpersonal liking and behavioral compliance

This paper reports three studies investigating the effects of benevolent and corrective humor on interpersonal liking and willingness to change problematic behavior. Study 1 (n = 375) found that participants liked corrective-humor-tellers who were socially distant less than those who were socially close, whereas they liked benevolent-humor-tellers equally well regardless of social distance. Study 2 (n = 576) replicated the results of Study 1, showing greater effects of social distance on interpersonal liking and willingness to change behavior when corrective, rather than benevolent, humor was used. Furthermore, Study 2 identified the perceived motive of the humor teller as the mediator for the observed effects. Study 3 (n = 399) manipulated the perceived motive of the humor teller and demonstrated that corrective humor could be more effective on interpersonal liking and willingness to change behavior when the benign motive was made salient. These findings contribute to the humor literature and provide practical implications for using humor in daily life.

The Periphery of Humorous Literature : on the Relationship between Humorous Literature and Folk Customs, Taoism and Buddhist Literature

Humorous literature is a kind of literature which describes ugly images, humorous events, parody of orthodox style, and presents the characteristics of banter, playfulness and vulgarity. In the past studies, there have been many misunderstandings of humorous Literature. For example, Wang Yanshou

Laughing with me or laughing at me? The differential effects of leader humor expressions on follower status and influence at work

SummaryAlthough research suggests that leader humor shapes followers' perceptions of their leaders' status, questions remain as to whether and how leader humor can shape followers' own acquisition of status at work. Drawing from the approach‐avoidance framework, we provide an important extension to the leader humor literature by developing a serial mediation model that explains how and why two styles of leader humor—aggressive humor and affiliative humor—differentially impact followers' ability to garner and wield social influence in the work environment. We theorize that leader aggressive humor, which constitutes unconstrained execution of power that is invasive and hostile in nature, produces a status‐suppressing effect by activating followers' avoidance system, whereas leader affiliative humor, which constitutes relational connection with restrained superiority, produces a status‐enabling effect by activating followers' approach system. We further propose that leader aggressive (affiliative) humor has a negative (positive) indirect effect on followers' constructive voice and work engagement via their avoidance (approach) orientation and workplace status. We find consistent support for our hypothesized predictions across two survey studies. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this study.