This thesis sought to demonstrate that humour and the grotesque are the primary tools by which Mda achieve his postcolonial strategies of &quot / writing back&quot / , that is, of asserting an identity in the face of colonial pressures, apartheid and the growing selfishness of many in the new, post-democratic South African society.

M.A. / South Africa is a multiracial and multicultural society, and the diversity of languages reflect a complex and differentiated nation. This investigative study attempts to show how South Africans from different cultural and linguistic groups experience the humour in the Madam & Eve comic strips and whether, to some extent, they share a common sense of humour. The study starts with an investigation into the relationship between culture and language through the Sapir and Whorf hypothesis. Furthermore the study discusses the relationship between culture, language and humour to show that humour is in many instances culture specific. In culture-specific humour, the humour tends to be at the cost of people from a different cultural group; thus “we” can laugh at “them”. The study also defines humour and investigates the working of humour through the superiority theory, the relief theory and the incongruence theory. The discussion shows that participants in humour need to share the right context and knowledge before they can enjoy the humour. The study looks at comic strips as a genre and how humour operates in comic strips. The investigation also discusses the background on and the characters in the Madam & Eve comic strips. The discussion shows the humour in the Madam & Eve comic strips depicts social issues, racial relationships, especially the relationship between the white Madam, her elderly mother and the black Eve, crime in South Africa and politics. An empirical survey serves as the vehicle to investigate how respondents from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds experience the humour in Madam & Eve. The different examples were chosen to see if respondents experienced certain types of humour depicted in the comic strips in a negative way. The study includes analysis of the different racial and linguistic groups’ experience of the humour depicted in the comic strips included in the questionnaire to show differences in different groups’ experiences. Although some of the respondents took a more neutral stance to some of the ethnic humour depicted in Madam & Eve, generally speaking the respondents experienced the humour depicted in the comic strips in a positive way.

O objetivo desta dissertação de mestrado é realizar um estudo sobre a presença, na poesia de João Cabral de Melo Neto, de artifícios compositivos associados às práticas poéticas antigas: em um primeiro momento, a doutrina da agudeza, a partir da experiência de alguns poetas seiscentistas espanhóis; já em um segundo momento, a poesia medieval castelhana, por meio da leitura do Cantar del Mio Cid , das obras de Gonzalo de Berceo e das Coplas sobre la muerte de su padre , de Jorge Manrique. Como se explicaria o uso de procedimentos técnicos antigos por um poeta moderno, considerado materialista e nominalista? A fim de buscar respostas para tal questionamento, pretende-se, de maneira mais específica, analisar os efeitos e as problematizações que tais recursos poéticos trariam para a lírica de João Cabral em um momento fundamental de sua construção poética: a publicação de O Cão sem Plumas (1950) e O Rio (1953). Por exemplo, os recursos retórico-poéticos próprios do século XVII incluem-se num sistema autor-obra-público que não é moderno e pressupõem regras estabelecidas para cortesãos numa sociedade de corte. A fundamentação desses recursos é substancialista, metafísica e escolástica. Logo, resta um questionamento: quais significações o uso de procedimentos técnicos antigos traria para a construção e para a recepção dessa poesia em pleno século XX? / The purpose of this master\'s thesis is to conduct a study on the presence of compositional artifices associated with ancient poetic practices in the poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto: firstly, the doctrine of wit, from the experience of some Spanish poets of the 17th century; then, in a second moment, the Castilian medieval poetry, through the reading of El Cantar del Mio Cid , the works of Gonzalo de Berceo and Coplas sobre la muerte de su padre , by Jorge Manrique. How would one elucidate the use of ancient technical measures by a modern poet, considered materialistic and nominalistic? In order to find answers to such questions, it is intended, in a more specific way, to analyze the effects and problematizations that such poetic resources would bring to the lyric of João Cabral at a crucial moment of his poetic building up: the publication of O Cão Sem Plumas (1950) and O Rio (1953). For instance, the seventeenth-century rhetorical-poetic features are included in an author-work-public system that is not modern and presupposes established rules for courtiers in a court society. The basis of these features is substantialistc, metaphysical and scholastic. Hence, one of the questions raised by this work is: what are the meanings that the use of old technical procedures would bring to the building up and receiving of this poetry in the middle of the twentieth century?

"Investing in Stereotypes" unearths a tradition of humor that may initially sound counter-intuitive: it sees stereotypes as valuable. Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Charles Wright, and Suzan-Lori Parks reveal the way racial and sexual stereotypes paradoxically complicate their subjects in the very attempt to simplify them. The compulsive repetition of stereotypes and the contradictory meanings that stereotypes embody create absurdly comical effects that are, in the hands of these writers, surprisingly humanizing. To unveil the tensions in, say, Sambo, the happy plantation slave who is at once harmless and savage, completely known and enigmatic, is to invest in the stereotype's comic implication that the subjects it hopes to fix are endlessly changing and exhaustingly complex--that those subjects are, in fact, human. Departing from the most common techniques used to resist stereotypes (inversion, exaggeration, and modification), investment, as I theorize it, is a comic form of engagement that enacts Du Bois's concept of second-sight: the ability to perceive the blind-spots of another's cultural perspective from the vantage point of one's own. I begin the dissertation with Hurston because the sort of second-sight her characters practice is the precondition for Ellison's democratic America, Wright's empathic witnessing, and Parks's sovereign communities. Hurston uses tactics of trickery, even more nuanced than Henry Gates's field-framing concept of "Signifyin(g)," to encourage her readers to account for their cultural blind-spots by forcing them to move between the contradictions within a stereotype. For example, when the speaker of "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" vacillates between being "savage" and "cosmic" as she dons the Sambo stereotype, she creates epistemological uncertainty about the cultural knowledge the reader uses to racialize others. By helping people in conflicting positions of power understand their common humanity and their mutually limiting misrecognitions, comic second-sight can work to bridge social divides. "Investing in Stereotypes" shows why the humor of the oppressed deserves more than the scant scholarly attention it has received and also unearths a mode of oppositional consciousness crucial for the emancipationist project of African American literary studies.

The object of this thesis is to produce a critical edition of Lording Barry's play Ram Alley (first published in 1611 by Robert Wilson and printed by George Eld). This edition will consist of (a) an annotated, modernised spelling version of the text, that text being based on a bibliographic study of the first quarto, and (b) an introduction which will cover: the printing of the first quarto, the life of Lording Barry and his critical reception, the play's place in and contribution to early Jacobean city comedy (particularly in relation to the use of wit and bawdy in masculine self-definition), and the problems of annotating a text which is so reliant for its humour on bawdy innuendo. The annotation will be very much fuller than is normal for an edition of an early modern play text, aiming to provide not just explanation but also commentary on and contextualisation of the language, contemporary and cultural references, characterisation, and action. This play is something of a by-way in the early Jacobean drama, and, like its author, is little known. It is, however, a competent example of the type of comedy produced for the private theatres and reflects, therefore, on the work of other, better known dramatists, in particular Thomas Middleton. In terms of original contribution to the field of study, this thesis will, it is hoped, add to our knowledge and understanding of: 1. the text of Ram Alley 2. the production of the first quarto of Ram Alley 3. the working practices of the printer, George Eld (who was also responsible for the first quarto of Troilus and Cressida and of Shakespeare's Sonnets) 4. the nature and hermeneutics of wit in Ram Alley 5. approaches to editing early modern dramatic comedy 6. Jacobean city comedy as a genre.

Orientador: Tania Regina de Luca / Banca: Silvia Maria Azevedo / Banca: Laura Moutinho Nery / Resumo: A partir de 1860, dois personagens tornaram-se familiares aos leitores da imprensa fluminense: o Moleque e o Dr. Semana, figuras que se transformaram em sinônimo da publicação que lhes deu vida, a Semana Ilustrada. Nas edições semanais, o cenário urbano da corte ganhava traços caricaturais e o jovem escravo alfabetizado e seu senhor branco circulavam livremente pelas ruas, abordavam os rumos da política imperial, as apresentações artísticas dos teatros e denunciavam as condições precárias dos serviços públicos. Dentro de uma grande comédia dos cidadãos, os mendigos, ratoneiros, pretos tigres, leões do norte, políticos e sinhás namoradeiras estavam sujeitos a esbarrar no esperto menino de libré e seu ioiô de cabeça avantajada e cabeleira volumosa. Para compor um heterogêneo mapa citadino, a sociedade fluminense, suas relações sociais e seus hábitos públicos e privados eram expostos pelas crônicas e caricaturas que não deixavam de cultuar a fumaça industrial, as artes civilizadoras, os estudiosos da ciência e o tempo do progresso. Tendo em conta a longevidade da revista, que atravessou diversas conjunturas que particularizaram o Segundo Reinado, a Semana Ilustrada apresenta-se ao historiador como uma fonte instigante, que se entrelaçou à imprensa ilustrada oitocentista, à escravidão urbana do Rio de Janeiro, aos aspectos anatômicos, afetivos e morais dos habitantes e à lógica do riso e do humor da época / Abstract: From 1860, two characters became familiar to the readers of the Fluminense Press: the Moleque and Dr. Semana, figures that have become synonymous with the publication that gave them life, the Semana Ilustrada. Weekly editions, the urban setting of the Court wincaricature traces and the young literate slave and his white Lord freely circulated in the streets, talked about the imperial politics directions, the artistic presentations of theatres and denounced the precarious conditions of public services. Inside of large citizens of comedy, the beggars, lurchers, black tigers, lions of North, politicians and flirt ladies were subjects to bump the smart boy of liveryand your yo-yo, of a big head and voluminous hair. To compose a heterogeneous map city, the Fluminense society, their social relations and their publicand private habits were exposed by the chronics and caricatures that did not fail to worship the industrial smoke, civilizing arts, the scholars of science and the time of progress.Having regard to the longevity of the magazine, that crossed several times in the Second Reign, the Semana Ilustrada presents itself to the historian as an exciting source, that intertwined to illustrated press of 19th Century, to urban slavery of Rio de Janeiro, to anatomic, emotional and moral aspects of the inhabitants and to logic oflaughter and humor of the time / Mestre

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There are various approaches to the explanation of humor in the field of humor research. Some of these theories, while providing interesting insight into the phenomenon known as humor, remain limited in their ability to account for how humor is recognized. Others do not even address the issue. This thesis compares five different theories in humor research by analyzing the humorous short story "My Watch" by Mark Twain. These theories are: 1. a typological approach to humor, 2. a social- functional model, 3. incongruity theory, 4. Grice's Cooperative Principle taken from linguistic pragmatics, and 5. the General Theory of Verbal Humor devised by V. Raskin and S. Attardo. The comparative analysis, following an extensive review of the literature, first interprets the humor in the short story in the light of each theoretical model. During the course of the analysis, the limitations inherent in each theories' treatment of humor are illustrated and these argue and provide evidence for the adoption of the General Theory of Verbal Humor because of its greater sophistication in building a model of humor recognition. Furthermore, in analyzing Twain's short story this thesis establishes the generalizability of this more sophisticated theory to at least some types of literary humor, specifically the tall tale. Finally, further research implications and general connections between the theoretical approaches discussed in this thesis and the teaching of the English language to non-native speakers highlight the practicality of applying insights from humor research to the field of teaching.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English