Humour as I See It E-Book

Stephen Leacock

• Herausgeber: ERIS
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: ERIS Gems
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 17

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

"The world's humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization."Stephen Leacock writes a masterful account of how humour works—and of how it very often doesn't. As well as being remarkably insightful about the various ways in which a joke can fall flat, Humour as I See It is an exceptionally humane testimony from one of the English language's most gifted humourists.

Leseprobe

IT IS ONLY FAIR THAT I SHOULD BE allowed a few pages to myself to put down some things that I really think. Once I might have taken my pen in hand to write about humour with the confident air of an acknowledged professional.

But that time is past. Such claim as I had has been taken from me. In fact I stand unmasked. An English reviewer writing in a literary journal, the very name of which is enough to put contradiction to sleep, has said of my writing, “What is there, after all, in Professor Leacock’s humour but a rather ingenious mixture of hyperbole and myosis?”

The man was right. How he stumbled upon this trade secret, I do not know. But I am willing to admit, since the truth is out, that it has long been my custom in preparing an article of a humorous nature to go down to the cellar and mix up half a gallon of myosis with a pint of hyperbole. If I want to give the article a decidedly literary character, I find it well to put in about half a pint of paresis. The whole thing is amazingly simple.

But I only mention this by way of introduction and to dispel any idea that I am conceited enough to write about humour, with the professional authority of Ella Wheeler Wilcox writing about love, or Fred Astaire talking about dancing.

All that I dare claim is that I have as much sense of humour as other people. And, oddly enough, I notice that everybody else makes this same claim. Any man will admit, if need be, that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim, or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him a mortal affront.

“No,” said a friend of mine the other day, “I never go to Grand Opera,” and then he added with an air of pride—“You see, I have absolutely no ear for music.”

“You don’t say so!” I exclaimed.

“None!” he went on. “I can’t tell one tune from another. I don’t know Home, Sweet Home from God Save the King. I can’t tell