What are ALL the humorous genres?

Question

I'm planning on writing a novel which employs a mutlitude of humurous genres. Take, for instance, satire, romantic humour, black humour, ect. Honestly, I'm hoping for a wide choice, so if you can get over 20 I'll give you a thumbs up.

I'm not going to be able to incorporate all humurous genres into a novel as of yet. For now, I'll stick to about 10 short chapters and a different view point and a different humour genre for each chapter. However, if I'm feeling ambitious in teh future.

I believe that incorporating different syles of humour will ultimately keep the humour from turning stale and boring.

Answer 1

I wonder if anyone can say they could safely covered ALL possible humorous genres? But if you want 20, how about I give you 20 plus! Besides the ones you've already mentioned, here are some other authentic literary genres:

1) Anacreontics
2) burlesque
3) clerihew
4) comedia de capa y espada
5) comedy of humors (sorry, as a Yank I have to go with the American spelling)
6) comedy of manners
7) commedia dell' arte
8) epigram
9) fabliau
10) farce
11) jingle
12) lampoon
13) light verse
14) limerick
15) mock epic
16) nonsense verse
17) pantomime
18) parody
19) pasquinade
20) romantic comedy
21) sotties
22) tragicomedy
23) vers de societe

Frankly, I feel like this almost deserves a finder's fee versus a token thumbs up, but que sera sera! I hope you'll at least do the courtesy in your response of telling us why you want to incorporate all humorous genres into a novel. It's an intriguing idea.

Good luck with your novel. You've got quite a hodgepodge to integrate!

Answer 2

question is unclear but all genres can be humorous depending on the creativity of each writer and the audience reception. satire, by far, is the most humorous (animal farm - Orwell). Tragicomedy follows suit (merchant of Venice - Shakespeare).

Answer 3

You can carve up humour by topic, intended audience, stylistic treatment and the essence of the humour itself. For instance a lot of romantic comedy is just comedy of manners about romance; dark humour is often just irony and cynicism about particularly morbid topics.

H.W. Fowler divides comedy into eight broad categories, which I usually take as my starting point. Each category gets its humour from a different subject with a different treatment and a different intended audience. Here they are, adapted from Fowler:

/Humour/ arises from observation of human nature. It is aimed at discovery, and designed to appeal to audience sympathy.

/Wit/ arises from creating surprises from the province of words and ideas. It is aimed at illuminating, and appeals to an audience's intelligence.

/Satire/ accentuates (or exaggerates) morals and manners. It is aimed at amending ill-conceived ideas and behaviours, and appeals to an audience's self-satisfaction.

/Sarcasm/ uses inversion about faults and foibles. It's aimed at inflicting pain on its target, and appeals to the victims of such faults and foibles, and any bystanders.

/Invective/ uses direct statements about someone's misconduct. It's aimed to discredit, and appeals to the public.

/Irony/ arises by using factual statements to mystify the truth. it's aimed to create exclusivity. It appeals most to the knowledgable, included inner circle.

/Cynicism/ exposures paucity of morals. Its aim is to justify certain attitudes or behaviours, and it appeals most to those who seek respectability.

/Sardony/ is the pessimistic exploration of adversity. Its aim is to relieve suffering and it's directed at oneself.

When I first read this list I wondered where certain comedic styles were - for instance slapstick. On reflection I realised for example, that the humour in slapstick is actually not based on getting a pie in the face, but in how that event occurs. In particular, throwing a pie at someone is a physical form of invective. It's intended to humiliate and discredit. It's funny to watch someone toss a pie at someone else. But *receiving* a pie in the face is all about sardony.

To build a "genre" of comedy, you can take some of these comedic elements, add some subject matter and pick a certain style. If you take physically difficult situations, add invective and sardony, you can get slapstick. If you take a socially difficult situation, add invective and satire you get commedia dell'arte. Put irony and cynicism together on a morbid topic and you get dark humour. Put wit, satire and irony together on the topic of infidelity and you can get bedroom farce.

As you can see (and as other posters have answered), there are potentially many more than twenty comedic genres. (In fact, you could even possibly invent some new ones). Depending on how you want to design your novel it may be useful to work with subjects and comedic elements instead.

I have included a link to an etymology web-site which includes a reference to Fowler's categorisation of comedy. Hope it's useful.