English Composition I
This guide will help you in completing assignments for Prof. Mendelman's course this semester.
It's important to remember that the research process is iterative. This means, it may take you several attempts in a variety of resources to find all of the needed information to complete your paper or project. One source will not provide all of the answers.
Getting Background on Humor & Satire
TIP: Define your terms to be clear about what your paper will discuss.
Humor
From the Oxford English Dictionary
9a. The ability of a person to appreciate or express what is funny or comical; a sense of what is amusing or ludicrous.
9b. With reference to action, speech, writing, etc.: the quality of being amusing, the capacity to elicit laughter or amusement. Also: comical or amusing writing, performance, etc.
"humour | humor, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/89416. Accessed 5 November 2019.
A comprehensive dictionary that also traces the development of English words from approximately 1150 AD up to the present day. Click on "Simple search" in the lower left corner of the database page to be able to search for words in the definitions, quotations, and more.
Satire
From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Satire is both a mode and a genre of verse and prose literature that adopts a critical attitude toward its target with the goal of censuring human folly. Satire is an eminently versatile form whose structure, style, tone, and subjects vary across a wide spectrum, but generally intends, as Jonathan Swift states, "to mend the world" ("A Vindication of Mr. Gay and The Beggar's Opera").
Jones, W. R. "Satire." The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Roland Green, et al., Princeton University Press, 4th edition, 2012. Credo Reference. Accessed 6 Nov. 2019.
