Lesson 5-4 The Role of Humour
Completion requirements
The Role of Humour
|
Target |
Assignment |
Understand your purpose for reading
Can you always believe the narrator of a story?
How and why do authors add humour to their stories?
What kind of engaging story can you create?
Audience
Humour
must have a target to be funny, and writers have to be careful they do
not offend their audience. Sometimes, the safest target for humour is
oneself or people in general. If the target is another person or
group, one must be careful not to hurt their feelings.
As a humorist, consider your audience, and ask yourself these questions:
- Would all age groups and all groups in society find this text funny?
- Would some groups find it funnier than others might?
- What are some examples in the text indicating that the humour is aimed at a particular group?
- What groups might disapprove of the humour or not get the humour?
courtesy of Curriculum Corporation Inside Out Student Guide http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/humour.pdf
Narrators - recap
The author and the narrator are not always the same.
You have noticed in the selections that you read in the iLit Anthology that each text has an author's biography at the beginning and a section called "What Inspired Me to Write this Selection". Reading these sections before and after reading the text will help you to distinguish between the author and the narrator as you read.At times, the narrator who is a participating character cannot be trusted fully and is called an unreliable narrator. A narrator may be unreliable for various reasons; he or she might have a personal bias, might lack knowledge, might make mistakes, or might omit information deliberately.
One kind of story that experiments with point of view and various narrators is a tall tale, a story of unbelievable elements mixed with truth.
In a tall tale, the main character often is extraordinary such as the legendary Albertan, Johnny Chinook.
Across Canada, through repetition, stories have grown partly from real events and real people into fabled stories. They have developed into famous poems and songs.
Peace River's legendary Henry Fuller (also known as Twelve-Foot Davis), Newfoundland's legendary Jack, and Ottawa's Big Joe Muffera are based on real people. Other stories do not involve people, but are based on famous objects such as the French Canadian flying canoe (La Chasse-galerie), or legendary events such as the Klondike gold rush, or places such as Northern Canada in "The Cremation of Sam Magee" by Robert Service.
In their retellings, storytellers have preserved the original dialects of the people.
In a tall tale, the main character often is extraordinary such as the legendary Albertan, Johnny Chinook.
|
|
Listen to an oral storyteller retell the stories of Johnny Chinook .
|
Across Canada, through repetition, stories have grown partly from real events and real people into fabled stories. They have developed into famous poems and songs.
Peace River's legendary Henry Fuller (also known as Twelve-Foot Davis), Newfoundland's legendary Jack, and Ottawa's Big Joe Muffera are based on real people. Other stories do not involve people, but are based on famous objects such as the French Canadian flying canoe (La Chasse-galerie), or legendary events such as the Klondike gold rush, or places such as Northern Canada in "The Cremation of Sam Magee" by Robert Service.
In their retellings, storytellers have preserved the original dialects of the people.