Comedy

We will explore the structure of comedy as it is employed in plays, film scripts, short stories, novels, and poetry. An emphasis will be placed on how language is utilized to generate humor and how the various elements of a piece of art guide the comic experience. The course will challenge students to create their own theories as to the structure of comedy, and the final exam will include the opportunity for students to present their theories and analyze the theories of their peers. Works to be read might include Aristophanes’s The Frogs, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Swift’s A Modest Proposal, television scripts for Seinfeld, and selections by Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, and Garrison Keillor from the Oxford Book of Humorous Prose.