Graduation Date
5-2016
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department or Program
Graduate Humanities
Department or Program Chair
Joan Baranow, PhD
First Reader
Judy Halebsky, PhD
Second Reader
Graham Guest, PhD
Abstract
Humor is a powerful rhetorical device employed at all levels of human discourse—from casual banter to political debate. Still, despite humor’s global prevalence, its historical transgressiveness, and its distinct potential both to neutralize and critically engage highly fraught issues, humans do not often pause to ask how humor works. And what does its working tell us about our humanness? This thesis explores the operation of humor in literature and performance, using tools provided by structuralist, deconstructive, and postmodern critical arenas, to reveal how humor’s fundamental structures invite humans to entertain new perspectives and practice empathy. The study considers irony, the performance of stakes, wordplay, departure from form, timing, metatheatrics, and cross-dressing. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ca. 1595) serves as a key text, but films and television series including Star Wars (20th Century Fox, 1977, 1983), Young Frankenstein (20th Century Fox, 1974), and Doctor Who (BBC,1963- ), are employed among other popular examples to demonstrate diverse types of humor.
Included in
Acting Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Theatre History Commons