Page 89 - The Language of Humour

76 WRITTEN TEXTS—LITERATURE
uses a different rhetorical style, which builds up in a long sentence, with
many digressions: ‘or at any rate’, ‘whether or not’, ‘seems to me’ This
all suggests that the speaker is taking the time to be absolutely precise.
The f inal comparison that is of fered is a ridiculous overstatement, ‘the
worst excesses of the French Revolution’, that undermines the
impression of authority and good sense.

Extension

Collect examples of films and plays marketed as comedies, and
consider whether these three features occur: a plot structure that deals
with obstacles in the way of young lovers; comic interludes provided by
characters marked by their language as from a lower class; and humour
created through double meanings and sexual innuendo.

Prose

This section does not deal with books that are compilations of material
originally performed on stage, radio or television. (See Units 7 and 8.)
Nor does it include books that are compilations of short, humorous
extracts or comic novels. The term comic novel indicates that it will
clearly be humorous, or satirical, in its overall purpose and structure.

HUMOUR IN CHARLES DICKENS

Other novels have humour occurring as one of many devices, alongside
passages that have no humorous content. The novels of Charles
Dickens, for example, have some richly comic characters, even though
the work itself would not be classed as primarily humorous. Examples
could be taken from almost any novel of Dickens. His characters are
often described as ‘caricatures’, as their physical features and character
traits are exaggerated to comic effect.
The targets of Dickens’s satire in Hard Times are the utilitarian
philosophies of education and industry, represented in the following
extract by the character of Thomas Gradgrind. Dickens shows his ideals
to be misguided, partly by the disasters that occur in the plot, and partly
by individual scenes like this, parodying the characters and his beliefs.