This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

With an Example

William B. Bean, M.D.

Arch Intern Med. 1962;110(6):819-822.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In our somber times when the idea of fun is looked upon as extraneous or artificial if not downright wicked, when organized as well as unorganized minorities have made it impossible to tell a joke not at somebody's expense, joke telling has more or less vanished. Humor is hemmed in. Literary fun is arid and atrophied. The synthetic gag of television evokes mechanical sound effects to produce artificial applause. For most of us the gag is well named. Our error-prone age has made the word wisecracker by transposition from wiseacre which in turn was a corruption of "wisesayer."

There is, however, one form of humor or wit that has managed to survive. In essence it is more akin to criticism than it is to spontaneous joking or humor. In its perfection parody carries penetrating critique. It may produce anything from slightly astringent amusement to a riot of thigh-slapping, convulsive laughter. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Parodies: An Anthology from Chaucer to Beerbohm—and After, compiled with an introduction and notes by Dwight Macdonald, New York, Random House, 1960.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?