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Humorous Discourse As Deconstructive Play
Abstract
The general purpose of this work is to demonstrate that deconstructive theory can explain the function of humor, or, conversely, that the process of humor can illustrate deconstructive theory. The points at which the two discourses converge or illuminate each other are highlighted, using as a literary focus a historic period in which literature explicitly designated as "humorous" flourished in Spain--specifically the 1920s and 1930s--and, more exactly, four authors identified with this movement--Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Wenceslao Fernandez Florez, Enrique Jardiel Poncela, and Julio Camba. These four authors pragmatically and theoretically sustain a concept of humor as a linguistic game that deconstructs our collective disease--the language through which we create our world and our being. Humor is principally a linguistic phenomenon that, in a peculiar manner, explains the process of signifying. Its fundamental resource is playing with words, making meaning indefinite, divided, and even impossible. As is true of all linguistic games, humor is intimately bound to the cultural context in which it manifests itself, and which, simultaneously, it helps to create. These, then, would be the two main divisions of the present analysis: (1) humor as seen from within itself--its structures and mechanisms; and (2) humor within its context, with which it maintains a constant exchange of mutual support and annihilation.
Subject Area
Romance literature
Recommended Citation
Costa, Maria Dolores, "Humorous Discourse As Deconstructive Play" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9305816.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9305816