AP Language
Classroom Notes: Satire Notes
humor theory:
We don’t understand humor. We see things and we laugh, but we don’t often
understand the art of humor. We learn best through humor and fun, so for AP, we must
understand (or at least recognize) some of the techniques writers, actors, and humorist employ
to make a point. Below you will see the different types of humor listed; over the next few
weeks, we will study closely humor as it plays out in everyday life.
Two types of Satire:
Horatian satire is: tolerant, witty, wise and self-effacing
Juvenalian satire is: angry, caustic, resentful, personal
Satiric Devices
1. Humor
A. exaggeration (Hyperbole): the formalized walk of Charlie Chaplin,
the facial and body contortions of Jim Carrey
B. understatement (Litotes): Fielding’s description of a grossly fat
and repulsively ugly Mrs. Slipslop: “She was not remarkably
handsome.”
C. incongruity: Pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit together
D. deflation: the English professor mispronounces a word, the
President slips and bangs his head leaving the helicopter, etc.
E. linguistic games: malapropisms, weird rhymes, etc.
F. surprise: twist endings, unexpected events
2. Irony: Literary device in which there is an incongruity or discordance
between what one says or does, and what one means or what is generally
understood.
3. Invective: name calling, personal abuse, etc.
AP Language and Composition - LCHS, Mr. Thomas
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AP Language
Classroom Notes: Humor Theory
4. Mock Encomium: praise which is only apparent and which suggests
blame instead
5. Grotesque: creating a tension between laughter and horror or revulsion;
the essence of all “sick humor: or “black humor”
6. Comic Juxtaposition: linking together with no commentary items which
normally do not go together; Pope’s line in Rape of the Lock: “Puffs,
patches, bibles, and billet-doux”
7. Mock Epic/Mock Heroic: using elevated diction and devices from the
epic or the heroic to deal with low or trivial subjects
8. Parody: mimicking the style and/or techniques of something or someone
else
9. Inflation: taking a real-life situation and blowing it out of proportion to
make it ridiculous and showcase its faults
10. Diminution: taking a real-life situation and reducing it to make it ridiculous
and showcase its faults
AP Language and Composition - LCHS, Mr. Thomas
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