An Evocative Humorist Chat-Bot
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Grumpy Old Humorist Tells All: Three Short Essays on Writing, Plus Random Thoughts on Same by Ed Mcclanahan
224 Ed McClanahan Grumpy Old Humorist Tells All: Three Short Essays On Writing, Plus Random Thoughts on Same by Ed McClanahan —“I can read readin’, but I can’t read writin’. The reason I can’t read writin’ is, it’s wrote too close to the paper.” —Clem Kadiddlehpopper When book reviewers deign to notice that I exist at all, they tend to refer to me as (among other lower life forms) a “humorist.” I’m always flattered, of course, to be nominated for the post, but I’m afraid I must politely decline to run, on the grounds that it would entail too much responsibility, trying to be funny all the time. The fact is, at my age, being funny ain’t really all that easy—or, to put it another way, being my age ain’t really all that funny . or, for that matter, all that easy either. We’ve all heard it said—usually of some poor, befuddled old bird like me—that “he’s taken leave of his senses.” What actually happens, though, is that our senses often pre- empt us to the punch, and take their own leave almost before we suspect they’re even contemplating a separation, much less a divorce. Corrective measures may, of course, sometimes be taken; cataract surgery is a wonder and a marvel, and I suppose there’s probably one of those “almost invisible” hearing aids circling my head at this very mo- ment, looking for an ear to build its unsightly nest in. My sense of smell has long since abandoned me (an impairment which, having its own occasional compensations, doesn’t even qualify me for disability assistance); and when it left, it took with it a disheartening measure of my sense of taste—so that, at dinnertime, I sit there grieving silently while everyone else is saying grace. -
“The Grin of the Skull Beneath the Skin:” Reassessing the Power of Comic Characters in Gothic Literature
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English English, Department of 12-2011 “The grin of the skull beneath the skin:” Reassessing the Power of Comic Characters in Gothic Literature Amanda D. Drake University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Drake, Amanda D., "“The grin of the skull beneath the skin:” Reassessing the Power of Comic Characters in Gothic Literature" (2011). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 57. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/57 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. “The grin of the skull beneath the skin:” Reassessing the Power of Comic Characters in Gothic Literature by Amanda D. Drake A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy English Nineteenth-Century Studies Under the Supervision of Professor Stephen Behrendt Lincoln, Nebraska December, 2011 “The grin of the skull beneath the skin:” 1 Reassessing the Power of Comic Characters in Gothic Literature Amanda D. Drake, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2011 Advisor: Dr. Stephen Behrendt Neither representative of aesthetic flaws or mere comic relief, comic characters within Gothic narratives challenge and redefine the genre in ways that open up, rather than confuse, critical avenues. -
Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, Or, Abjection in America John Limon 6030 Limon / STAND up COMEDY / Sheet 1 of 160
Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America John Limon Tseng 2000.4.3 18:27 6030 Limon / STAND UP COMEDY / sheet 1 of 160 Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America 6030 Limon / STAND UP COMEDY / sheet 2 of 160 New Americanists A series edited by Donald E. Pease Tseng 2000.4.3 18:27 Tseng 2000.4.3 18:27 6030 Limon / STAND UP COMEDY / sheet 3 of 160 John Limon Duke University Press Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America Durham and London 2000 6030 Limon / STAND UP COMEDY / sheet 4 of 160 The chapter ‘‘Analytic of the Ridiculous’’ is based on an essay that first appeared in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 14, no. 3 (winter 1997). The chapter ‘‘Journey to the End of the Night’’ is based on an essay that first appeared in Jx: A Journal in Culture and Criticism 1, no. 1 (autumn 1996). The chapter ‘‘Nectarines’’ is based on an essay that first appeared in the Yale Journal of Criticism 10, no. 1 (spring 1997). © 2000 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ! Typeset in Melior by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Tseng 2000.4.3 18:27 6030 Limon / STAND UP COMEDY / sheet 5 of 160 Contents Introduction. Approximations, Apologies, Acknowledgments 1 1. Inrage: A Lenny Bruce Joke and the Topography of Stand-Up 11 2. Nectarines: Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks 28 3. -
Comic Vision and Comic Elements of the 18 Century Novel Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Pamukkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi Sayı 25/1,2016, Sayfa 230-238 COMIC VISION AND COMIC ELEMENTS OF THE 18TH CENTURY NOVEL MOLL FLANDERS BY DANIEL DEFOE Gülten SİLİNDİR∗ Abstract “It is hard to think about the art of fiction without thinking about the art of comedy, for the two have always gone together, hand in hand” says Malcolm Bradbury, because the comedy is the mode one cannot avoid in a novel. Bradbury asserts “the birth of the long prose tale was, then the birth of new vision of the human comedy and from that time it seems prose stories and comedy have never been far apart” (Bradbury, 1995: 2). The time when the novel prospers is the time of the development of the comic vision. The comic novelist Iris Murdoch in an interview in 1964 states that “in a play it is possible to limit one’s scope to pure tragedy or pure comedy, but the novel is almost inevitably an inclusive genre and breaks out of such limitations. Can one think of any great novel which is without comedy? I can’t.” According to Murdoch, the novel is the most ideal genre to adapt itself to tragicomedy. Moll Flanders is not a pure tragedy or pure comedy. On the one hand, it conveys a tragic and realistic view of life; on the other hand, tragic situations are recounted in a satirical way. Moll’s struggles to live, her subsequent marriages, her crimes for money are all expressed through parody. The aim of this study is to analyze 18th century social life, the comic scenes and especially the satire in the novel by describing the novel’s techniques of humor. -
Proceedings of 3Rd International Workshop on Computational Humor
Computational Humor 2012 EXTENDED ABSTRACTS OF THE (3rd INTERNATIONAL) WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL HUMOR Amsterdam, June 8, 2012 Anton Nijholt (ed.) CIP GEGEVENS KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Nijholt, A. Computational Humor 2012 Proceeding of 3rd International Workshop on Computational Humor A. Nijholt (ed.) Amsterdam, Universiteit Twente, Faculteit Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica ISSN 0929–0672 CTIT Workshop Proceedings Series WP12-02 Keywords: humor, humor models, humor theory, humor generation, corpora, jokes, semantics ontologies, natural language processing © Copyright 2012; Universiteit Twente, Enschede Book orders: Ms. C. Bijron University of Twente Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science P.O. Box 217 NL 7500 AE Enschede tel: +31 53 4893740 fax: +31 53 4893503 Email: [email protected] Druk- en bindwerk: Ipskamp Drukkers, Enschede. Preface to Computational Humor 2012 Like its predecessors in 1996 (University of Twente, the Netherlands) and 2002 (ITC-irst, Trento, Italy), this Third International Workshop on Computational Humor (IWCH 2012) focusses on the possibility to find algorithms that allow understanding and generation of humor. There is the general aim of modeling humor, and if we can do that, it will provide us with lots of information about our cognitive abilities in general, such as reasoning, remembering, understanding situations, and understanding conversational partners. But it also provides us with information about being creative, making associations, storytelling and language use. Many more subtleties in face-to-face and multiparty interaction can be added, such as using humor to persuade and dominate, to soften or avoid a face threatening act, to ease a tense situation or to establish a friendly or romantic relationship. -
Computational Humor [email protected] Kim Binsted, University of Hawaii
Trends & Controversies Steven Staab University of Karlsruhe Computational Humor [email protected] Kim Binsted, University of Hawaii No, this is no April Fool’s prank. Computer scientists at labs around the world are conducting serious research into … humor. Although it might seem whimsical, many excellent reasons exist to take a closer look at this fascinating aspect of human cognition and interaction. cally addressed language phenomena that are amenable to Humor affects attention and memory, facilitates social interaction, combinatorial approaches using static and stereotypical and ameliorates communication problems. If computers are ever semantic representations. Although such approaches are going to communicate naturally and effectively with humans, they adequate for much of language, they’re not easily extended must be able to use humor. Moreover, humor provides insight into to capture humans’ more creative language interpretation how humans process language—real, complex, creative language, capacities. An alternative tack is to begin by modeling less not just a tractable subset of standard sentences. By modeling humor typical, more complex phenomena, with the goal of generation and understanding on computers, we can gain a better encompassing standard language as a trivial case.1 picture of how the human brain handles not just humor but language and cognition in general. Semantic interpretation In popular perception, computers will never be able to use or Suppose you hear someone saying, “Everyone had so appreciate humor. Fictional computers and robots are almost always much fun diving from the tree into the swimming pool, we portrayed as humorless, even if they’re skilled at natural language, decided to put in a little … ” At the point in the sentence graceful bipedal motion, and other human behaviors that current where you hear the words “put in,” you’ve already com- machines find challenging. -
Donoso the Humorist: a Study of Entropy
DONOSO THE HUMORIST: A STUDY OF ENTROPY _____________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board _____________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY _____________________________________________________ by John A. Cunicelli August 2017 Examining Committee Members: Hortensia Morell, Advisory Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Hiram Aldarondo, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Sergio Ramírez-Franco, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Michael Colvin, External Reader, Marymount Manhattan College ii © Copyright 2017 by John A. Cunicelli All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Donoso the Humorist: A Study of Entropy John A. Cunicelli Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2017 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: Hortensia Morell For over two millennia, humor has been the topic of philosophical discussion since it appears to be a nearly universal element of human experience and offers different perspectives on that experience. Humor delves deep into the cultural norms governing religion, family, sex, society, and other aspects of day to day life in order to investigate the absurdities therein. Viewing such reified aspects of life in a new, humorous light is one of the principal characteristics of the Chilean author José Donoso’s novels. Oftentimes irreverent and scathing, Donoso’s dark humor reaches entropic proportions since it accentuates (and at times even seems to celebrate) the human condition’s descent into chaos. Given this downward trajectory, a selection of the Chilean author’s novels will be analyzed under the entropic humor theory originated by literary theorist Patrick O’Neill. The notion of entropy contains the very idea of a breakdown of order that tends toward chaos, so this special brand of humor is a unique fit for a study of Donoso. -
Computational Creativity: Coming of Age
Editorial Computational Creativity: Coming of Age Simon Colton, Ramon López de Mántaras, and Oliviero Stock n This editorial provides an introduction to current AI research on computationally created A artifacts as well as to the papers and topics cov- t its heart, computational creativity is the study of build- ered by this special issue on computational cre- ing software that exhibits behavior that would be deemed cre- ativity. ative in humans. Such creative software can be used for autonomous creative tasks, such as inventing mathematical the- ories, writing poems, painting pictures, and composing music. However, computational creativity studies also enable us to understand human creativity and to produce programs for cre- ative people to use, where the software acts as a creative collab- orator rather than a mere tool. Historically, it’s been difficult for society to come to terms with machines that purport to be intel- ligent and even more difficult to admit that they might be cre- ative. For instance, in 1934, some professors at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom built meccano models that were able to solve some mathematical equations. Groundbreak- ing for its time, this project was written up in a piece in Mecca- no Magazine. The article was titled “Are Thinking Machines Pos- sible” and was very upbeat, but surprisingly ends by stating that “Truly creative thinking of course will always remain beyond the power of any machine.” Surely, though, this attitude has changed in light of the amaz- ing advances in hardware and software technology that fol- lowed those meccano models? Sadly, no. -
Bibliography
Bibliography Bibliography Primary Sources Addison, Joseph. The Works of Joseph Addison. Ed. Richard Hurd. London: George Bell & Sons, 1893. Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele. The Spectator. 5 volumes. Ed. Donald F. Bond. Oxford: Claren- don P, 1965. Beowulf. A Verse Translation. Ed. Michael Alexander. London: Penguin, 2001. Boileau, Despréaux, Nicolas. L’Art Poétique. Ed. D. Nichol Smith. London: Cambridge UP, 1907. —————. The Art of Poetry Written in French by Sieur de Boileau. In Four Canto’s. Made English by Sir William Soames. By Since Revis’d by John Dryden, Esq. London: Printed and Sold by H. Hills, 1710. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Web. 26 Nov. 2009. —————. Œuvres poétiques; suivies d’Oeuvres en prose. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1935. Bouhours, Dominique. “The Conversations of Aristo and Eugene.” The Continental Model: Selected French Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century in English Translation. Eds. Scott Elledge and Don- ald Schier. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1970. —————. La Manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages d’esprit. Dialogues. A Amsterdam: Aux dépens d’Estienne Roger Marchand libraire, chez qui l’on trouve un assortiment général de toute sorte de musique très correctement corrigée, & qu’il vendra toûjours á meilleur marché que qui que ce soit quand même il devroit la donner pour rien, 1709. —————. Les Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugene. A Amsterdam : Aux dépens d’Estienne Roger, Marchand Libraire chez qui l’on trouve un assortiment général de toute sorte de Musique, 1703. —————. The Art of Criticism: or, the Method of Making a Right Judgment upon Subjects of Wit and Learn- ing. Translated from the best edition of the French, of the famous Father Bohours, by a person of quality. -
Containing Humour: the Humorist As Prisoner in Twentieth-Century Literature
Containing Humour: The Humorist as Prisoner in Twentieth-Century Literature by Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard 2017 Containing Humour: The Humorist as Prisoner in Twentieth-century Literature Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2017 Abstract The boundary-crossing categories of the prison, society, and the body, are spaces of constraint for literary characters which trigger humour in the works of five twentieth-century authors: Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello. These categories encompass a multiplicity of configurations of imprisonment, from the prison cell to ventriloquism. In twentieth-century fictions, spaces of imprisonment not only provide the setting and the cause for many humoristic situations, but they often become the root of a humoristic view of the human condition. Taking imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, my work analyzes confinement as a trigger for humour—indeed, as an essential structural condition for the emergence of twentieth-century humour. By comparing prominent modernist authors such as Nabokov and Pirandello with less studied ones such as Guareschi, individual thematic studies highlight the development of a paradigm which crosses languages, literary genres, and so-called national styles. Chapter 1 maps out a theoretical and chronological outline of humour in the twentieth century, highlighting recurring structures such as the split self, the association of opposites or the self-reflexivity inherent in humour, in order to prepare the ground for the following three thematic ii chapters, centred around the figures of the prison cell, society, and the body. -
Mark Twain's Subtle Sword of Satire
Mark Twain’s Subtle Sword of Satire 3-5 class days High School English DESIRED RESULTS: What are the “big ideas” that drive this lesson? Students will be able to identify satire and its intended point and target as it was employed by Mark Twain. They then should be able to employ the same technique of writing to satirize an aspect of modern society. What are the “essential questions” that students must answer in order to understand the “big ideas?” What is satire and why is it used? What is a humorist, and how does Mark Twain exemplify a humorist? What is an aphorism, and how can it be used as satire? CORE UNDERSTANDINGS: Identify what students will know and/or be able to do. Students will be able to define “satire” and recognize it in Mark Twain’s literature. Students will be able to differentiate between blatant and more subtle forms of humorous satire. Students will be able to write their own satirical work on a foible of modern society to emulate the style of Mark Twain. SUGGESTED ASSESSMENTS: In small groups, students examine the more dark satire that is present in chapter XXI and XXII (the description of the town in Arkansas and Col. Sherburn’s speech). Each group determines Twain’s purpose in the satire, the target he is focused on, and the devices he uses to both bring in comedy/humor while also pointing out a serious message. Following chapter XXII, individually, students find an example of dark/subtle satire and write a multi-paragraph response that determines Twain’s purpose in the satire, the target he is focused on, and the devices he uses to both bring in comedy/humor while also pointing out a serious message. -
Learning to Laugh (Automatically): Computational Models for Humor
Computational Intelligence, Volume 22, Number 2, 2006 LEARNING TO LAUGH (AUTOMATICALLY): COMPUTATIONAL MODELS FOR HUMOR RECOGNITION RADA MIHALCEA Department of Computer Science, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203 CARLO STRAPPARAVA ITC – irst, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, I-38050, Povo, Trento, Italy Humor is one of the most interesting and puzzling aspects of human behavior. Despite the attention it has received in fields such as philosophy, linguistics, and psychology, there have been only few attempts to create computational models for humor recognition or generation. In this article, we bring empirical evidence that compu- tational approaches can be successfully applied to the task of humor recognition. Through experiments performed on very large data sets, we show that automatic classification techniques can be effectively used to distinguish between humorous and non-humorous texts, with significant improvements observed over a priori known baselines. Key words: computational humor, humor recognition, sentiment analysis, one-liners. 1. INTRODUCTION ... pleasure has probably been the main goal all along. But I hesitate to admit it, because computer scientists want to maintain their image as hard-working individuals who deserve high salaries. Sooner or later society will realize that certain kinds of hard work are in fact admirable even though they are more fun than just about anything else. (Knuth 1993) Humor is an essential element in personal communication. While it is merely consid- ered a way to induce amusement, humor also has a positive effect on the mental state of those using it and has the ability to improve their activity. Therefore computational humor deserves particular attention, as it has the potential of changing computers into a creative and motivational tool for human activity (Stock, Strapparava, and Nijholt 2002; Nijholt et al.