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The presence of the humorous or comic in the Hebrew Bible has been well established in numerous studies. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the ark narrative in 1 Sam 4-6 has not featured regularly in works on humor in the Hebrew Bible, despite the fact that commentators regularly note the dark humor present in this narrative. I seek to fill that gap by offering a humorous reading of the ark narrative in 1 Sam 4-6, arguing not only that humor is present in the story and therefore worthy of attention but also that the dark humor of this narrative is part of how the story works. One does not fully appreciate the point of this narrative unless one sees the funny side. I will utilize the benign violations theory of humor to see the way this story plays with the reader's understanding of 'the other' first by mocking the other in order to give the Israelites hope and then by asking just how other the other really is in order to convict the Israelites. In order to see how the story does both of these things, we need to pay attention to its comic vision., Two peanuts were walking down the street, and one was a salted. Late night comedian Stephen Colbert once described the above as a perfect joke. (1) It starts, he says, [...]

Introduction: Reverse Motion and Temporal Plasticity (1) ONSCREEN, WORKERS JERKED THEIR PICKS unnaturally away from bits of stone that slid upward, miraculously fusing onto a flattened edifice. Meanwhile, a thickening [...]

The Motti e facezie are an important collection of Renaissance Italian short stories, characterized by the presence of a leading actor: Arlotto de' Mainardi, an historically documented Florentine priest. While the text was a best-seller in the sixteenth century, unfolding in a vast number of editions despite the pressures of Catholic counter-reformation censorship, its print history has been largely neglected even by its most recent scholarly editor. This essay focuses on the likely first philological analysis of the Motti e Facezie del Piovano Arlotto's princeps, offering a brief summary of the text, its composition and reception histories, its manuscript tradition, and the problematic decision by G. Folena to neglect the print tradition in the preparation of his edition. After laying this contextual groundwork, the essay turns to an analysis of five (of the seven) remaining copies of the editio princeps, showing two different states of variants and focusing on one particular copy (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Pal. E.6.6.28) owned and annotated by the important philologist and Florentine refugee in France, Jacopo Corbinelli., I MOTTI E FACEZIE DEL PIOVANO ARLOTTO SONO UNA RACCOLTA DI facezie composte sul finire del XV secolo, la cui principale peculiarita e data dalla presenza di un protagonista unico: [...]

Throughout the course of the 2016 US presidential election, hundreds of jokes dealing with the topic appeared on the English-speaking internet. While Russian folklore could have simply exploited translations of existing American texts, representing Trump as incompetant, a statistical and semantic analysis of the corpus of jokes that appeared on Russian social media during the 2 weeks following the election shows that a different type of joke, one juxtaposing the election systems in the United States and Russia, was much more popular. Yet 70 percent of the reposts of the jokes suggested an unrelated base meaning--the idea that Russia and the United States exist in a state of constant competition, trying to influence each other's internal and international policies. For the audience that opposes the Russian president and the loyalist mass media, Trumplore becomes a way to laugh not at the American president-elect, but at Russia's own administration. Keywords AFS ETHNOGRAPHIC THESAURUS: Jokes,joke cycles, political humor, political jokes, internet, social media, Introduction: The Hidden Agenda of Putins Trump Joke On June 2, 2017, at the Economic Forum in Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin was asked to comment on the United States withdrawing [...]

At a reading for Poetry East at the London Buddhist Centre on 6th December 2014, Fleur Adcock was invited to read the work of other poets whom she admired. One [...]

Abstract: Drawing on Caroline Humphrey's analysis of the personal consequences of 'decision-events', in this article we interpret the 2013 protests around Gezi Park in Istanbul as an eventful situation that [...]

Lo que convierte a Shakespeare en un hombre de su tiempo es, entre otras cosas, su pasión por los juegos de palabras, entendidos como un jugueteo entre formas (idénticas/similares) y los significados (distintos) de las palabras. Mientras que el uso intensivo de los juegos de palabras en sus obras está en clara consonancia con el espíritu de su tiempo, ya que este fenómeno gozaba de un altísimo estatus en la literatura y la cultura isabelina popular y culta, el estilo de humor lingüístico de Shakespeare es sin duda único. El presente estudio se centra en la dinámica de los juegos de palabras practicada por las damas de compañía en tres comedias shakespearianas: Lucetta, en The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Maria en Twelfth Night y Margaret en Much Ado About Nothing, y pretende arrojar luz sobre los intricados procesos de los juegos de palabras dependientes del contexto. Llega a la conclusión de que, aunque los personajes examinados no encajan en la categoría de expertos en los juegos de palabras sumamente prolíficos, su manera de jugar con las palabras es completamente consciente y está diseñada cuidadosamente para unos escenarios contextuales individuales, principalmente para la interacción con otras personas. De este modo, en vez de para propósitos ornamentales, se demuestra que los juegos de palabras se usan calculadamente como una poderosa estrategia discursiva destinada a establecer una dominación interactiva para reírse de la pretenciosidad de los interlocutores. Palabras clave: juegos de palabras; comedias de Shakespeare; juegos de palabras estratégicos; interacción; contexto What makes Shakespeare a man of his time is, among other things, his infatuation with punning, understood as playful fiddling with (identical/similar) forms and (distinct) meanings of words. While heavy use of puns in his plays is very much in keeping with the spirit of the day, the phenomenon enjoying a remarkably high status in Elizabethan low- and highbrow literature and culture, Shakespeare's brand of linguistic humour is surely one of a kind. The present study focuses on the dynamics of punning practiced by ladies-in-waiting in three Shakespearean comedies, i.e., Lucetta in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Maria in Twelfth Night and Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing, and is designed to afford insight into intricate context-sensitive punning processes. It leads to the conclusion that even though the characters examined do not come into the category of highly prolific punsters, their playing with words is fully conscious and carefully tailored to individual contextual settings, principally to the type of interacting parties. Accordingly, rather than for ornamental purposes, punning proves to be used calculatedly as a powerful discourse management strategy aimed at asserting interactive dominance in order to mock the pretentiousness of interlocutors. Keywords: pun; wordplay; Shakespeare's comedy; strategic punning; interaction; context, Interactional Aspects of Language-Based Humour in Shakespeare's Comedies: The Dynamics of Punning by Ladies-in-Waiting. 1. INTRODUCTORY NOTES Due to lack of terminological homogeneity and typological transparency in the voluminous critical [...]

Because of authoritarianism, no collective protests or acts of resistance have emerged since 2001 in Eritrea. Dissidence manifests itself only through indiscipline, obstruction, desertion, and exile. Expressions of discontent and condemnation are carefully concealed in private spheres. This article presents and analyzes how Eritrean conscripts perceive and criticize the political arena and state power in their country by analyzing a corpus of discourse and jokes they share among each other about the state, the government, and its policies. In accounting for this form of resistance, this article documents how these views and their humor, in challenging the legitimacy and the hegemony of the political elites, often contribute to the reification and accentuation of certain characteristics of state power., The Eritrean Postrevolutionary State and National Service (1) God surveys the world one day, seeing the mountains, valleys, seas, and all there is. Suddenly, God stops and exclaims: 'Why is […]

Human rights advocacy is often austere, if not funereal. Nevertheless, humorists have long engaged human rights activism through their art. Against claims that humor weakens action or conservatively maintains the status quo, this essay argues for humor as necessary element in human rights activism. At its best, humor awakens communities by providing new perspectives on reality and sharpening understandings of injustice. It provokes dialogue and action and humanizes all parties in a struggle. This essay explores humor as a necessary, if not sufficient, component of an activist political style through a case study of comedian and activist Dick Gregory. Using evidence from Gregory's performances and speeches as well as public discourse about Gregory, this essay establishes humor as an integral characteristic of an activist political style. Key Words: humor, political style, activism, race/racism, Dick Gregory, Denouncing oppression or advocating for human rights infrequently evokes levity. Social justice advocacy is often austere, if not funereal. Tragic injustices often vivify the stakes of human rights struggles, consequently [...]

The scene: A conference room at a private villa in the outskirts of Paris, at Avenue du General Leclerc, Gif sur Yvette, 91 Essonne. Diplomatic delegations of North Vietnam and [...]

OUR INTRODUCTION AND WARH UP ACT Do you know the joke about the man who couldn't find the humor section in the feminist bookstore? Probably. Because feminists don't have a [...]

IN THE RHETORIC OF FICTION, Wayne Booth writes, 'Even the most unconscious and Dionysian of writers succeeds only if he makes us join in the dance' (xiv). All writers and [...]

It was 3:00 am and three tired emergency room residents were wondering why the pizza they'd ordered hadn't come yet. A nurse interrupted their pizza complaints with a shout: 'GSW [...]

This article examines the convergence of humor and modernist aesthetics in Rafael Alberti's Farsa de los reyes magos (1934) and Mayakovski's Mystery-Bouffe (1918; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) as representatives [...]

The 'sexy dumb blonde' stereotype, which emerged in American popular culture during the Twentieth century, is one of the most salient themes of contemporary Internet humor. In this paper, we analyze the new generation of online blonde jokes, claiming that they incorporate three main features. First, in relation to the blonde image itself, we find that stupidity has superseded promiscuity as the main theme of Internet-based blonde jokes. Second, in relation to the spread of the jokes, we describe the globalization of the blonde joke on the Internet, and its translation into numerous languages. Finally, we portray the emergence of 'Meta blonde' jokes-- texts that build on the popularity and familiarity of the audience with the blonde joke genre in order to comment and reflect on it, yet in so doing, cunningly reinforce old stereotypes. Keywords Blondes * Globalization * Humor * Internet * Jokes, Question: How does a blonde turn on the lights after sex? Answer: She opens the car door Question: How does a blonde kill a fish? Answer: She drowns it The [...]

This paper argues that it is impossible to know why we laugh. There are a number of theories that attempt to explain why we laugh but they all have limitations. It is possible, however, to know what makes us laugh and 45 techniques that inform humor are listed and used to analyze a number of humorous texts. These techniques can also be used to study the humor of different nations to determine which they favor and which they neglect, thus offering insights into national character. Keywords Humor * Techniques * Superiority * Incongruity * Aggression, According to social scientists, the average person laughs fifteen times in a typical day. How they found this figure is beyond me, but let's assume it is correct. We also [...]

This article examines the relationship between Jewish jokes and the development of modern Yiddish literature. Beginning by exploring the central role of humor within the environment of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi culture, the article goes on to outline how jokes, especially their orality, have come to be understood as representative elements of that humor. During the formative period of modern Yiddish literature, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, authors experimented with forms and genres to expand the literature and its expressive potential. Sholem Aleichem, one of that literature's most famous exponents, used humor as a central component of that expansion. This article concludes with an analysis of how he used the joke as an experimental tool in the development of Yiddish literature. Keywords: Jewish jokes, Yiddish, Sholem Aleichem, Jewish discourse, To begin with the straightforward statement that 'laughter is universal; humor is local' is to assert that humor is an area in which cultural resonances feature prominently. However, although cultures [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2009.00282.x Byline: Charles E. Case (1), Cameron D. Lippard (2) Abstract: Humor is a significant weapon in interpersonal and intergroup conflict and competition. Over the centuries, males have used humor and jokes to create and perpetuate patriarchal ideals, relationships, and structures. Today, feminists and other proponents of gender equality use humor to deconstruct patriarchal ideologies and sexist stereotypes. This exploratory study analyzes a collection of over 1,700 jokes identified as feminist and women's humor to discover what these jokes suggest with regard to the male-dominant structure in society and how these jokes are subversive in attempting to disrupt gender stereotypes and roles. We find that the humor of women and feminists seeks, in part, to discredit assumptions of males' superiority, masterfulness, sexual prowess, and extraordinary value to women and society. These jokes may, however, also work to reinforce stereotypes associated with men and women: 'If they could send a man to the moon, why not just send all of them?' Author Affiliation: (1)Augusta State University (2)Appalachian State University

Jim Northrup occupies a somewhat unique place among current-day Native American writers. His writings are well known, and he often travels to give readings. He continues to live, as much [...]

Some joke performances are meant to elicit differential responses--laughter from some, and unlaughter from salient others--and so serve as powerful methods for heightening group boundaries. This article illustrates this thesis by analyzing audience responses to practical jokes and to the Muhammad cartoons that aroused worldwide controversy in 2006. To further make this case, I will delineate a theory of the audience for humor. Such a theory has heretofore been largely missing from both folklore and humor scholarship; instead, the lion's share of scholarly attention has gone to the performers, with the audience's role taken for granted. In boundary-heightening humor, the audience response is the subject of special attention, and it is interpreted in terms of contemporary notions about the importance of having a sense of humor and especially of being able to laugh at oneself., Jokes and humor have attracted a fair amount of serious attention by folklorists, but outside of our field these topics are often easily dismissed as trivial and insignificant. However, in [...]

The mediating role of humor in the relationship between recall and bizarre elaboration is investigated using different regression methods. Findings indicate that bizarreness facilitates recall after a significant delay and this effect is mediated by humor. A comprehensive theory of the impacts of bizarreness is discussed.

This essay discusses Elfriede Jelinek's complex relation to music from both historical and theoretical perspectives, with reference to media theory and psychoanalysis. The first part situates her literary musicality relative to German Romanticism and Modernism (Joyce). Literary musicality is inseparable from a poetics of autonomy and self-reference, toward which Jelinek has an ambivalent relation. A passage from Lust is compared with Joyce's punning technique as analyzed by Lacan, and Freud's theory of jokes. Finally, Die Klavierspielerin is read to show music's links with perverse sexuality in the figure of Erika. Jelinek's complex musicality is in tension with her direct political and feminist engagement. Keywords: Jelinek, Elfriede / Lacan, Jacques / Joyce, James / music and literature / humor, I It may be surprising that the work of Elfriede Jelinek has been so little discussed with reference to music, as Pia Janke has recently noted. A great deal of [...]

A study explores if, beyond its psychological appeal or social function, there is a way in which humor is relevant to philosophy or if it serves a philosophical purpose. It argues that humor is useful for philosophers insofar as it stimulates reflection or speculation, but that this depends upon a specific theory of humor together with certain assumptions about the nature of philosophy.

The author discusses about the possibilities of humor research in the science fields of linguistics and physiology.

John Bock's interdisciplinary fusion of language, fashion, film, video, performance, and installation makes his work virtually impossible to categorize. Bock's contagious sense of humor runs throughout his multimedia extravaganzas, which include improbable props like mayonnaise, cigarette butts, and artificial blood.