The Art Of Comedy Writing Paperback 1st

Arthur Asa Berger

Just as a distinctive literary voice or style is marked by the ease with which it can be parodied, so too can specific aspects of humor be unique. Playwrights, television writers, novelists, cartoonists, and film scriptwriters use many special technical devices to create humor. Just as dramatic writers and novelists use specific devices to craft their work, creators of humorous materials―from the ancient Greeks to today's stand-up comics―have continued to use certain techniques in order to generate humor.In The Art of Comedy Writing, Arthur Asa Berger argues that there are a relatively limited number of techniques―forty-five in all―that humorists employ. Elaborating upon his prior, in-depth study of humor, An Anatomy of Humor, in which Berger provides a content analysis of humor in all forms―joke books, plays, comic books, novels, short stories, comic verse, and essays―The Art of Comedy Writing goes further. Berger groups each technique into four basic categories: humor involving identity such as burlesque, caricature, mimicry, and stereotype; humor involving logic such as analogy, comparison, and reversal; humor involving language such as puns, wordplay, sarcasm, and satire; and finally, chase, slapstick, and speed, or humor involving action.

1412814898

9781412814898

English

Transaction Publishers

15-Sep-2010

138

<p style=""margin-left: 1.5pt""> <span lang=""EN""><em>Arthur Asa Berger</em> is professor emeritus of broadcast and electronic communication arts at San Francisco State University. He is the author of numerous articles, book reviews, and books on media, popular culture, humor, and tourism, and the series editor of Transaction’s <em>Classics in Communication and Mass Culture</em>.</span></p>

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