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'Irony' comes from the Greek eironeia (εἰρωνεία) and dates back to the 5th century BCE.This term itself was coined in reference to a stock-character from Old Comedy (such as that of Aristophanes) known as the eiron, who dissimulates and affects less intelligence than he has—and so ultimately triumphs over his opposite, the alazon, a vain-glorious braggart.
Repetition is the essential comedic device and is often used in combination with other devices to reinforce them. The "callback" in comedy writing—in which a statement or theme is recalled as the punchline or close of a scene—is a classic example of the tension and release that are possible using repetition.
Some people are naturally better performers than others; however, anyone can tell a joke because the comic trigger is contained in the narrative text and punchline. A joke poorly told is still funny, unless errors or omissions make the intended relationship between the narrative and the punchline unintelligible.
Dramatic Irony is when the reader knows something important about the story that one or more characters in the story do not know. For example, in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the drama of Act V comes from the fact that the audience knows Juliet is alive, but Romeo thinks she's dead. If the audience had thought, like Romeo, that she ...
Humour (Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin: humor, "body fluid"), controlled human health and emotion.
Her mature novels employ irony to foreground social hypocrisy. [11] In particular Austen uses irony to critique the marriage market. [12] Perhaps the most famous example of irony in Austen is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a ...
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satirical or ironic imitation.Often its subject is an original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or 1960s counterculture).
Relief theory suggests humor is a mechanism for pent-up emotions or tension through emotional relief. In this theory, laughter serves as a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological stress is reduced [1] [3] [7] Humor may thus facilitate ease of the tension caused by one's fears, for example.