Specific Literary Texts Research Articles

Comparative Study of Chinese Translations of “Gitanjali” based on Natural Language Processing

This paper employs the HanLP natural language processing model to conduct a quantitative text analysis of four Chinese translations of “Gitanjali”. The analysis examines text features such as character and sentence count, lexical properties, lexical density, and high-frequency words. The results indicate that, except for Wu Yan’s translation, the text features of the other translations are relatively similar in terms of data distribution. Wu Yan’s translation has higher character and sentence count, and usage of lexical properties than the other translations, but it has the lowest lexical density, indicating a lower information density. The study also reveals that the choice of lexical properties and high-frequency words in each translation is influenced by the translator’s personal language preferences. Although the types of high-frequency words are relatively fixed, their frequencies vary significantly. Based on these findings, the study further uncovers the intrinsic logic and structural relationships among different text features, offering significant insights for the study of specific literary and translation texts, as well as broader translation and linguistic research. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of HanLP in literary and translation research, highlighting the potential of natural language processing models in large-scale text analysis.

Diverse Experiences in Children's Literature: Langston Hughes

AbstractProviding students encounters with diverse books is an important endeavor, and Langston Hughes themed picture books can serve as one avenue for successfully incorporating diverse literature into elementary literacy instruction. Using the methods of qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2014) this study investigates the ways in which Langston Hughes and his literature have been incorporated into children's picture books and outlines the potential benefits of using these themed texts with elementary students. The findings of this research present specific literary texts for teachers to incorporate into their classrooms and discusses the unique opportunities these picture books can provide young readers and writers.

Of freedom and literature in Africa and the diaspora

This introduction to a special issue on freedom presents a set of original essays that reflect critically on the idea of freedom in relation to specific literary texts from Africa and the African diaspora. Read together, the essays presented in this introduction make up a rich tapestry, offering a set of reflections that map out the complex geo-histories of freedoms in Africa and an array of creative representations of this generative idea across the continent and in the diaspora. This diversity of texts and contexts allows for a wide-ranging critical exploration of a variety of genres, languages, cultures and historical periods. Areas of common ground across the ten essays include literature as a form of protest, creative ways of resisting repression, sidestepping to get around constraints, efforts to build networks of solidarity within and across communities and exploring what it means to be human within these reclaimed spaces.

Reception of Prosocial Literary Role Models by Children of Younger School Age

The aim of the study is to clarify how a younger school-aged child perceives literary heroes who represent prosocial literary role models, and thus provide evidence for the positive trace of prosocial literary role models in the (prosocial) development of the child reader. The research was conducted on a sample of 24 participants (average age 9.04 years) using research methods such as product content analysis, projective interview and writing techniques. Empirical research gave a positive clue, which the specific literary text with the prosocial literary role model “printed” into the notion of prosociality in the child. The prosocial literary role model may perhaps therefore be used in education as an effective tool in the (prosocial) upbringing of the child of younger school age.

Education for Peace and the Selection of a Literary Canon for War Remembrance

'Peace forever' is a desirable curriculum aim for schools, and a legitimate principle for the selection of curriculum content. In this article I consider a tension between humanistic and hermeneutic motivations for the selection of a literary canon for educational purposes. I conclude that teachers do well to consider the selection of curriculum content within a broader context of moral and spiritual development, but this should be accompanied by letting go of the hope that a specific literary text or other curriculum object will transform a student in any particular or predetermined way. This insight applies to the presentation of war poetry but is also relevant to the project of character education more broadly.

When Translation Reshapes Reception: The Curious Case of Zeruya Shalev in the German Literary Sphere of World Literature

Abstract This article sets out to explore the conditions that paved the way for the unique success of the German translation of Zeruya Shalev’s second novel, Love Life (Hayei ahava, 1997), offering a specific example of the potential benefits that arise from cross-cultural translations. Upon its publication in Israel, Love Life was received quite critically; it was considered too simplistic, straightforward, and feminine to be considered an ‘important’ work. However, following the novel’s translation into German by Mirjam Pressler in 2000, it gained wide recognition in Germany and soon became a best-seller, owing much to Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s unusually warm review on the television program Das literarische Quartett (The Literary Quartet). Hence, this article examines the various cultural and commercial conditions that set the backdrop for Love Life’s success as a translated work. While focusing on the reception of a specific literary text, the article surveys both Israeli and German literary spheres, and draws on the contemporary discourse in the field of World Literature. Furthermore, it offers a comprehensive discussion on translation, and demonstrates the unique position of translated literature, and specifically Hebrew literature, in the German literary field. Subsequently, the discussion sheds light not only on the circumstances that supported, if not determined, Love Life’s enthusiastic reception in Germany, but also on the extraordinary effect of this success on Shalev’s position within the Israeli literary system in the two decades that have followed.

Introduction: Form and Medium

Introduction: Form and Medium

ORDERED LIBERTY IN BORYS HUMENIUK’S TEXTS

This paper is concerned with the notion of ordered liberty and whether Borys Humeniuk promotes it in his texts. In order to determine it several issues are examined. First, the author establishes reasons for discussing this writer by describing Humeniuk’s personal and professional life; while also connecting the fact that Humeniuk acknowledges the importance of literature for shaping a society. Further, the author establishes the framework of the paper, as he discusses what freedom is in the philosophical tradition of the West and elaborates on the key idea of the paper — what the ordered liberty is and its origin. After an introduction of specific literary texts for the paper, the author moves to their discussion. This research includes a description of tiers of the society that is discerned in connection with personal responsibility and selflessness. Those tiers would be, firstly — members of the military who are ready to die for their country; secondly — everybody who in some way helps the military; thirdly — draft dodgers; and lastly — government officials, who are despised for being corrupt. This breakdown helps understand Humeniuk’s perception of ordered liberty, as it gives better understanding of his value system. Then using previous findings the author analyses three types of freedom found in Humeniuk’s texts. The first is freedom from life, as from war and suffering. Second, freedom that manifests in a public setting. It surfaces in a sentiment that everyone should work for the cause of defending the country. Third, deeply personal freedom, which can be seen in behavior when people tend only to their business; furthermore, they are rather cynical of all institutions and their ability to improve. Lastly, author makes a connection between Humeniuk’s sentiment about artists’ great impact on society and his emphasis on the latter type of freedom, showing the disconnection between the two ideas. The novelty of such research lies in bridging Ukrainian literature and the Western philosophic tradition, specifically on freedom and its facets. The further development of this research is analysis of Ukrainian literature through this lens as it helps to establish the attitude of Ukrainians towards freedom and if applied properly, helps to encompass policy makers in their work for the prosperity of Ukraine.

Lucidarius in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, and Czechia: Types of Reception in the mid-16th to the First Quarter of the 20th Century

The article is focused on the problems of historical typology of the Slavic reception of the translated Lucidarius (Lucidář) in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, and Czechia throughout its existence. For the first time, a general overview of Slavic evidences is presented in a generalized way, reflecting various types of perception (positive, negative, and neutral) of the specific literary text and indicating the chronology of each of them. Based on these evidences, their historical interpretation is presented, which consists in identifying two qualitatively different stages in the reception of the text under consideration: emotionally engaged (it can equally manifest itself in a positive or negative attitude) and neutral. The change of these historical stages took place in different Slavic countries within half a century (from the 1850s/60s to the 1920s). This process did not depend on the national characteristics of the functioning of Lucidaria, for example, the number of translations performed or their manuscript copies made, as well as the presence or the absence of a local Slavic printed tradition of this particular text, which significantly influenced the degree of its dissemination and, consequently, the level of acquaintance with it in the reading public.

The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 by David Francis Taylor

Reviewed by: The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 by David Francis Taylor Robert Finnigan David Francis Taylor, The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 ( New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2018). Pp. 320; 76 b/w illus. $50 cloth. Appearing in The Guardian on 25th May 2019, Stephen Collins's cartoon "On Boris Johnson" evokes Macbeth's first meeting with the Weird Sisters in its depiction of a blustering Johnson receiving prophetic words from "midnight hags" around a witches' cauldron, in answer to his wish to know if he will become Prime Minister. As parodies like this and Ian McEwan's The Cockroach (2019) have risen in popularity, it is evident that the public desire for satirical send-ups derived from literary materials is as significant today as it was in the Golden Age of British caricature. For this reason, David Francis Taylor's The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 is both timely and welcome. Adopting a broadly historicist approach, Taylor's lively and nuanced study builds on the scholarship of Diana Donald, Brian Maidment, James Baker, and Ian Haywood to offer related arguments "about parody, [about] the afterlives of certain texts … [and] about satire's key role in the broader ideological enterprise of defining … high literary culture against the encroachments of the 'popular"' (ix). So doing, The Politics of Parody contributes to the burgeoning scholarship both on the era that is often seen as the height of British graphic satire and parody and on caricature's relatability to contemporary readers. Taylor begins by discussing the "literariness" of graphic caricature. Regarding the works of James Gillray, George Cruikshank, Charles Lamb, and William Hogarth, he develops a working model that considers two intertwined notions: the questions of "how graphic satire marshals the narratives, characters, and themes of literary texts as a means of giving shape to the political present" and of "why it is that prints from this period have habitual recourse to such sources and strategies" (4). To ground his argument, Taylor offers an overview of the canon of literary graphic satire, even as he is careful to observe that "satirical prints mined a fairly narrow range of literary works" (16). Taylor reminds readers that the complexity of graphic prints made caricature an elite form that was widely unavailable to the general public. Arguing that print shops became gentrified due to their prestigious locations, their ambitious names, and their willingness to charge admission, Taylor foregrounds the dominance of the elite in the "rarified marketplace of satirical prints" (24). For example, Taylor asserts that the domestic viewing of caricature was "a media event that served the imperatives of leisure and social lubrication" for the wealthy classes of Calke Abbey, Derbyshire (41). The second half of this study scrutinizes groups of satirical prints that evoke specific literary texts—Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610–1611) and Macbeth (1606), John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). Examining The Tempest or Enchanted Island (1762), Shakespeare's Prophecy [End Page 515] (1795),The Tempest or Prospero Triumphant (1827) and similar texts, Taylor tracks, with refreshing insight, the ways that these examples of "political theatre" (72) employed allusions to "island states" to lampoon British anxieties concerning the monarchy, the constitution, and British territorial sovereignty. Similarly, Taylor analyzes works including The Cauldron—or Shakespeare's Travestie (1820) and Revolution Anniversary or, Patriotic Incantations (1791) to show how "a Wilkesite satirist" employed tropes from Macbeth "to traduce Lord Bute as a usurper and a play upon pervasive mid-century Scotsphobia" (102–03). In his discussions of parodies featuring the Weird Sisters, notably those of Gillray, Taylor contends that such characters were frequently used to illustrate "the ever-mobile political codings of a text" (105) by signifying "collective political action and intrigue" (106) against traditional institutions. Taylor makes use of a two-pronged approach to consider how caricaturists employed and re-envisioned tropes from Paradise Lost to reach wide readerships. Firstly, arguing that caricaturists, including James Sayers and Hendrik Eland, read Paradise Lost as a mock epic, Taylor explains that they were able to produce graphic satire that appealed to...

Sport as Glissantian Relation in the Works of Roland Barthes, Roch Carrier, and Fatou Diome

This article focuses on the representation of sporting practices in the works of Roland Barthes, Roch Carrier, and Fatou Diome in order to illustrate how Glissant’s notion of Relation – and its concomitant principles of opacity, rhizome identity, and le Même and le Divers – shed new light on the modes of interaction entailed in global sports cultures. I explore the relevance of these concepts to an analysis of sports before turning to their applicability to specific literary texts in French. Although the mise en relation of individuals, peoples, and cultures through sport is generally presented as a positive in Barthes and Carrier, Diome’s novel underscores the illusionary nature of the sense of community created, including the perpetuation of exploitative societal structures.

Using the associative method of studying the text during university classes in literary disciplines

The article deals with the productive possibilities of the associative method of studying a literary text at university classes in literary disciplines. The student's creative thinking is characterized by the ability to generate new and sometimes unexpected semantic connections. Creative thinking largely depends on the so-called associative flexibility. There are several areas in the university teaching of literary studies in which the associative method of studying the text is effective. These are areas determined by the specifics of the type of artistic thinking, the specifics of a particular genre, and the individual manner of the writer. The method of developing associative thinking is important in the study of lyrical prose, where the specific weight of subtextual semantic nuances is high. Another area of literary studies in which an associative method of understanding a text is appropriate is the study of irony, including parody as ironic stylization. The very process of laughable reinterpretation of a foreign word implies the presence of a potential arsenal of situational associative references. At the same time, classes in literary studies use not only literary texts that are part of the main body of Russian literature, but also the range of phenomena that belongs to the so-called creative laboratory of the writer: writer's diaries, notebooks, work records, epistolary heritage. The method of associative study of the text can be used in the course of classes on practical poetics, where students comprehend all the complexities of the artistic form of a literary work. Using the associative method of studying a literary text helps to better understand the nature of the dialogical interaction between the writer and the reader, because a literary work is nothing more than a replica in the ongoing communication between the author and the recipient of his creation. This communication has its own hidden languages. A literary work can be called a meaning-intensive space of meeting and touching the associative fields of the writer and the reader. The educational tasks that can be solved by the associative method of learning are diverse. This technology helps to effectively assimilate special terminology; understand internal system connections in a literary text; establish significant connections between a specific literary phenomenon and the historical and literary context, cultural epoch; form and enrich connections between a specific writer's manner (stylistic originality) and the national Fund of the Russian language; identify cross-references between a specific literary phenomenon and the national cultural code; to determine the balance of traditional and innovative in relation to a specific literary text.

A threefold adaptation: Mario Martone's Leopardi

Abstract This article explores how Martone's seemingly traditional period biopic of nineteenth-century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi challenges the conventions of the genre, and could be read, instead, as an interesting case of cinematic adaptation on at least three different levels. I propose that Il giovane favoloso (Leopardi) is a film that, as a biopic, can be understood as an adaptation of a life experience – an adaptation that, in its cinematic construction, expresses an awareness of the biopic as a film genre that can only perform a representational version of a life. Secondarily, Leopardi is a film that engages with an array of cinematic strategies to 'give body' to Leopardi's lyrical texts, turning his lines into a sensorial experience. Finally, it is a film that not only 'translates' specific literary texts in images but also expresses the overall development of Leopardi's poetics into a distinctly cinematic syntax.

Literature as Conduct: On J. Hillis Miller’s Speech-act Theory and Its Application

Since the publication of How to Do Things with Words in 1962, Austin and his speech-act theory caused a great disturbance in the arena of linguistics and literature, not only initiating the study of pragmatics but also triggering the paradigm change of literary studies in the 20th century. Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Derrida, de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and many other scholars in the 1970s showed great enthusiasm for theory. Yet, the theory’s limitations and applications are widely known. The publication of Speech Acts in Literature and Literature as Conduct by J. Hillis Miller seems to have given a kind of momentum to its development. Taking Miller’s initiatives as a starting point, this article analyzes a specific literary text, The Ninth Widow by a Chinese overseas writer Yan Geling, with an intention to illustrate that the application of the speech-act theory in the literary studies is indeed promising and productive.

Deconstruction and the Transcultural Uncanny

Deconstruction and the Transcultural Uncanny

Victorian Pain by Rachel Ablow

Reviewed by: Victorian Pain by Rachel Ablow April Patrick (bio) Rachel Ablow, Victorian Pain ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. x + 191, $39.95/ £32.95 hardcover. In Victorian Pain, Rachel Ablow considers how texts by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Hardy grapple with the nature of pain in a century where scientific advances changed human experience of physical discomfort. Rather than engaging with religious and theoretical debates about the use of medicine to eradicate pain, Ablow deftly analyzes how specific literary and philosophical texts used pain "to consider the implications of the forms of subjectivity and sociality that the texts themselves explore and seek to produce" (4). This focus, along with the selection of texts and authors, will likely make this project more relevant to those working in literary studies and philosophy than those working on the social and behavioral side of disability studies. The introductory chapter provides an overview of recent theories of pain as well as Victorian discourse about it. Ablow begins with the best-known theoretical approach from Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain (1985), which represents pain as an inherently private experience that others cannot, no matter how much they wish to, ever know. Ablow's analysis places Scarry in conversation with, instead of in contrast to, theories of pain that recognize its connection to social life, exploring how pain connects the sufferer with others even if they cannot understand the experience. She builds upon these two approaches to consider how the authors in her study both think about pain and, more importantly to literary studies, use language to represent it. Ablow also lays out the contemporary Victorian conversation about pain and its uses, particularly in the context of newly discovered forms of anesthesia. Her contemporary sources range from volumes on philosophy and science to periodicals like the Westminster Review, Lancet, and British Medical Journal. As Ablow presents the structure of the chapters that follow, she very briefly—in just a single paragraph—summarizes the understanding of pain that shapes her own approach, noting the benefits and drawbacks of theorizing pain using Joanna Bourke's argument that the experience of pain is constructed partially through environmental interactions, Javier Moscoso's analysis of pain through theatrical elements, and Veena Das's description of pain as a transaction between sufferer and audience. The first three chapters of the volume explore the connections between pain and social life in nonfiction by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Martineau and in fiction by Charlotte Brontë. The first chapter focuses on the mental breakdown at the heart of Mill's Autobiography. Ablow reads it, in part, as a response to Mill's utilitarian education, citing heavily from his [End Page 570] father James Mill's writings about pain and the construction of sympathy. She also uses the possibility of compassion to connect the theories of James Mill to Scarry's over 150 years later. In response to the utilitarian views of his father, Mill develops what Ablow calls a social model of sensation as his "self-conscious difference from the collective constitutes the condition of [his] attachment to it" (34). This understanding of pain provides a foundation for the evolution of the concept through nineteenth-century essays, life-writing, and fiction. Chapter two draws on Martineau's Autobiography, Life in the SickRoom, Illustrations of Political Economy, and Household Education to explore how Martineau redefines pain in the context of liberal subjectivity and how her ideas were shaped by philosophy and religion. Ablow uses examples from Martineau's life-writing to demonstrate how she theorizes pain and the experience of it. Most of the quoted writing suggests not only that the invalid's condition separates her from social life but also that solitude from others who do not understand the pain is preferable. Ablow also resolves an apparent contradiction between Martineau's views on impersonality and her interest in mesmerism, which focuses on the connectedness between bodies in order to suggest that the connections drawn through mesmerism transcend corporeal social relations. In chapter three, the study turns from nonfiction to Brontë's novel Villette. Here, Ablow offers a perceptive close reading of Lucy Snowe's...

Literary Intransigence: Between J. Hillis Miller and Ranjan Ghosh

Hillis Miller and Ranjan Ghosh think literature from opposite but complementary points of view. Miller is the advocate of close reading and generally an inductive approach whereby specific interpretive problems in regard to specific literary texts critically revise broader theoretical assumptions and presuppositions. Ghosh, on the other hand, plays the consummate theorist, appropriating and critically developing various concepts in dialogue with a wide range of contemporary critical voices, then applying that revised/expanded concept to the analysis of specific works. Each models a different way to move between theory and interpretation, but both ground their thinking in the strangeness of literature, what Miller calls its ‘idiosyncrasy’ and Ghosh, based on his reinvigoration of the Hindi term, sahitya, its sacredness. This piece argues for the fundamental ‘foreignness’ of literature (and culture in general) as underwriting both approaches. Following upon Voloshinov, Benjamin, and others, I situate both theory and criticism of literature within the larger problem of translation as a crossing between languages that also brings the foreign into the native tongue, an irreducibility I call literary intransigence. As opposed to platitudes about ‘world’ literature, literary intransigence implies instead a vigorous reading of all literature as foreign.

The dark sting of degenerate nature. Sketch of the dark-romantic inspirations in Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose

The dark sting of degenerate nature. Sketch of the dark-romantic inspirations in Wojciech Smarzowski’s Rose The text presents Polish dark romanticism as an important source of inspiration for the images of violence, includ- ing sexual violence, in Wojciech Smarzowskis Rose. The author reveals the mechanisms of this inspiration: visual, dramatic, intellectual, and refers to specific literary texts, from the Romantic era and later, by Antoni Malczewski, Seweryn Goszczynski, Juliusz Slowacki and Wlodzimierz Odojewski.

Salvage Poetics in <em>See Under: Love</em>: Momik, Mottel and a Yiddish Post-Vernacular in Israeli Literature

David Grossman’s Hebrew novel, See Under: Love (1986) serves as a model for how Yiddish functions as a post-vernacular language in modern Hebrew literature. While many readers have noticed the skill with which Grossman mimetically represents the Yiddish-inflected Hebrew of some characters in See Under: Love, Grossman mostly sidesteps Yiddish as an actual language within his novel. The focus here is on how Grossman approximates Yiddish through two primary models of salvage poetics, a term I have coined to refer to the ways in which iconic literary styles and or specific literary texts are mobilized by contemporary post-Holocaust communities in order to approximate a world in the aftermath of its destruction. Salvage poetics become evident in Grossman’s deployment of Sholem Aleichem’s Motel Paysie dem ḥazen’s as well as in his representation of Anshel Wasserman’s “Children of the Heart” stories where a pre-vernacular, literary, European-based Hebrew is employed in order to invoke an East European Yiddish-speaking milieu.

The Implied Author as an Ethical Buffer: An Argument from Translated and Censored Fiction

If the Implied Author (IA) is the Object of a Belief,1 then let me start by confessing that I am a believer-though an unorthodox one as will become apparent. On the one hand, I will welcome the IA as a tool to analyze a particular comic narrative and its censored translation. On the other hand, and perhaps because I do not belong to any narratological church that takes Wayne C. Booth's notion of the IA as a dogma, I will dare to propose an IA concept that only roughly connects with Booth's and the orthodox believers' many descriptions of the IA. That rough connection is our shared concern for the ethics of fiction, for the role of the IA in this ethics, and for positing an author who is not the flesh-and-bones author (FABA). Yet my proposal should not take its strength as much from continuing a tradition-since my IAguided ethics of reading will also be opposed to Booth's-as from throwing fresh light on the interpretation, translation, and censorship of a comic narrative. To that effect, I will first briefly turn to the concept of the author who seems in need of a conceptual defense too. For both arguments-pro-author and pro-IA-I will mainly refer to the Spanish author Elvira Lindo and her comic narrative Manolito Gafotas (1994), and its American translation Manolito Four-Eyes (2008).It may be true that the IA debate has turned somewhat sterile over time (on which see Lanser, Manifesto 2011 ), but in my view this is mainly so because it has become primarily conceptual. The IA comes to life in specific ethical readings and specific translations of specific literary texts. Indeed, though my argument includes general discussions of genre (viz., fiction and comedy), it is entirely inspired and motivated by a specific censoring translation of a particular work of fiction.The Author Exists-Who Else Does the Comedy?Lindo's Manolito series, of which Manolito Gafotas was the first book to be published, is a comic narrative series immensely popular among Spanish children and adults. Manolito, the protagonist and first-person narrator, is a charming little boy who uses his particular sense of humor as he tells us about life in a workingclass suburb of Madrid. He admits his real name is Manolito Garcia Moreno but also insists that in the suburb everyone knows me as Manolito He then sets out to explain this apparently pleasing fact:I was named Manolito after my dad's truck, and the truck was named after my dad, whose name is Manolo. . . .I like that they call me Four-Eyes. At my school-which is called Diego Velazquezanyone who's a little important has a nickname. Before I had a nickname, I used to cry plenty. When a bully started in on me at recess, he always ended up calling me Four-Eyes or Fat Glasses. Since I've officially become Manolito Four-Eyes, insulting me is a waste of time. (Manolito Four-Eyes 3-5)2The narrator's idiosyncratic explanations and evaluations are not the only source of comedy, as the characters are also responsible for some pretty incongruous behavior-and incongruity is a well-known mechanism of humor.3 We learn for instance that one day Manolito got caught up in a street protest in Madrid. His grandfather, who accompanied him, asked a man to put Manolito up on his shoulders so that he could see what was happening. Manolito then realized that the man had dandruff:I noticed that the guy had dandruff so I decided to brush it off a little. I asked him why he didn't buy one of those shampoos they advertise on TV that gets rid of dandruff (and if you don't watch out, gets you a girlfriend, too). The guy put me down on the ground, all in a huff.... (my translation)4All of this is quite funny, yet so far we have no trouble explaining the comedy without recurring to the concept of the author. The protagonist's actions are incongruous, the dandruff guy feels ridiculed, and Manolito the narrator has his tongue-in-cheek way of telling things.However, as I have argued before (Narrative Humor I, Narrative Humor II), humor in narrative does not spring from the narrator or character only. …