ENGL 292  * Sec 350 * CRN 80902 * Online course

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.” – Langston Hughes

In the ENGL 292 Special Topics section “Humor and Literature,” students will investigating the role of the wit, jest and buffoonery in society; explore the cultural effects of gentle, broad and subversive comedy; and theorize about exactly what “funny” is.  In this online class, students will engage with written and performed texts to study the elements that create humor as well as contemplate what it is that different instances of comedy reveal about the creator, audience and their culture.

Featuring:

• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Additional writings and performances by:

• William Shakespeare
• Oscar Wilde
• George Carlin
• James Thurber
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Mark Twain
• Langston Hughes
• Dorothy Parker
• Richard Pryor
• Will Rogers
• and many others . . .