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The term black humour (from the French humour noir) was coined by the Surrealist theorist André Breton in 1935 while interpreting the writings of Jonathan Swift. [8][9] Breton's preference was to identify some of Swift's writings as a subgenre of comedy and satire [10][11] in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, [8][12] often rely...
Oct 22, 2024 · Though in 1940 the French Surrealist André Breton published Anthologie de l’humour noir (“Anthology of Black Humour,” frequently enlarged and reprinted), the term did not come into common use until the 1960s.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Feb 26, 2007 · Popular stand-up comedian Darryl Littleton explores that premise form a historical perspective. He has written a provocative new book titled, "Black Comedians on Black Comedy: How...
Jul 9, 2023 · But dark humor, also known as black comedy, can be found in classic literature, where the tradition originally flourished. From Seneca to Charles Bukowski, these writers demonstrate the power of...
- Postmodernism in Literature
- Martin Amis
- John Barth
- Richard Brautigan
- Roald Dahl
- Amanda Flllipaci
- Joseph Heller
- John Irving
- Philip Roth
- Kurt Vonnegut
After World War 2, there was a drastic re-evaluation of values throughout the world. The horror of the war changed how people thought of politics, human rights and even human nature. The movement in literature called "postmodernism" began to "play within the chaos" and, at times, even make fun of the human desire to find meaning within a world that...
The son of the great British comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin followed in his old man's footsteps but developed a writing style so weird, dark and bleak that even his father didn't have a lot of patience for it. Too bad because the younger Amis has developed into one of the most interesting living British writers. His first masterpiece, Money, ...
After writing two realist novels, themselves having a good degree of dark humor, Barth discovered postmodernism and created two of the weirdest literary masterpieces ever written. The Sot-Weed Factor is an epic tale of a poet's journey with mocking satire. Giles Goat-Boy is about a boy who is raised as a goat at a university and viciously makes fun...
Richard Brautigan got some attention for his first two novels and his minimalistic prose, but it wasn't until his third book, On Watermelon Sugar, that he became a true literary darling. The short novel is about a commune called iDeath and the events that occur there from the narrator's perspective. The novel portrays a story that can be interprete...
Many people don't know that famous children's writer Roald Dahlalso wrote fiction for adults. Unlike most people who have written both children's and adult fiction, there isn't much disconnect between the themes of Dahl's children's fiction and his adult work. His books for kids are essentially black comedies where children encounter a hostile adul...
Amanda Filipachi's debut novel Nude Menis wonderfully subversive and fun while exploring the most embarrassing subject matter. The twenty-nine-year-old narrator agrees to pose nude for an artist who does only nude paintings of men because of an attraction to her. Unfortunately, he becomes the object of affection for the artist's thirteen-year-old d...
Heller wrote Catch-22,which both spawned an idiom and may be the greatest American Novel of the 20th century. The plot follows a WW2 fighter pilot who is attempting to get out of flying more missions by feigning insanity. What stands in his way is Catch-22, a clause that states that if a pilot is crazy, he can be grounded, but if he requests to be ...
John Irving is a bit of a puzzling author when you try to define his style. His writing is basically Dickensian, but he concerns himself with many themes that Dickens never would have considered. He is also influenced by magic realists but does not contain these elements. He is not a postmodernist in the strictest sense but does use metafiction and...
The work of Philip Roth has been prolific and diverse, but some of his best work has been excellent examples of black comedy. His most famous novel, Portney's Complaint, has become the quintessential Roth novel and the one book of his that everybody should read. The story is a monologue of a young Jewish bachelor rambling about sex, guilt and frust...
Kurt Vonnegut is perhaps America's most famous writer of black comedy. His viewpoint is shaped by being a POW in World War 2 and witnessing the bombing of Dresden, Germany. His work blends science fiction with social satire for a potent effect. Mother Nightis an early work about an American who was a Nazi propagandist and uses the device of the unr...
Mar 3, 2009 · Author Darryl Littleton traces the roots of black comedy from the early days of Mantan Moreland to the modern comedic stylings of Chris Rock.
Oct 14, 2024 · A kind of drama (or, by extension, a non-dramatic work) in which disturbing or sinister subjects like death, disease, or warfare, are treated with bitter amusement, usually in a manner calculated to offend and shock. Prominent in the theatre of the absurd, black comedy is also a feature of Joe Orton's Loot (1965).
