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Ridiculous
To be ridiculous is to be something highly incongruous or inferior, sometimes deliberately so to make people laugh or get their attention, and sometimes unintendedly so as to be considered laughable and earn or provoke ridicule and derision. It comes from the 1540s Latin "ridiculosus" meaning "laughable", from "ridiculus" meaning "that which excites laughter", and from "ridere" meaning "to laugh". "Ridiculous" is an adjective describing "the ridiculous". In common usage, "ridiculousness" is used as a synonym for absurdity or nonsense. From a historical and technical viewpoint, "absurdity" is associated with argumentation and reasoning, "nonsense" with semantics and meaning, while "ridiculous" is most associated with laughter, superiority, deformity, and incongruity. ''Reductio ad absurdum'' is a valid method of argument, while '' reductio ad ridiculum'' is invalid. Argument by invective declaration of ridiculous is invalid, while arguments involving declarations of nonsense m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Absurdity
Absurdity is the state or condition of being unreasonable, meaningless, or so unsound as to be irrational. "Absurd" is the adjective used to describe absurdity, e.g., "Tyler and the boys laughed at the absurd situation." It derives from the Latin ''absurdum'' meaning "out of tune". The Latin ''surdus'' means "deaf", implying stupidity. Absurdity is contrasted with being realistic or reasonable In general usage, absurdity may be synonymous with nonsense, meaninglessness, fancifulness, foolishness, bizarreness, wildness. In specialized usage, absurdity is related to extremes in bad reasoning or pointlessness in reasoning; ridiculousness is related to extremes of incongruous juxtaposition, laughter, and ridicule; and nonsense is related to a lack of meaningfulness. Absurdism is a concept in philosophy related to the notion of absurdity. Philosophy Ancient Greece The Classical Greek philosopher Plato often used "absurdity" to describe very poor reasoning, or the conclusion fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Satire may also poke fun at popular themes in art and film. A prominent feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parody
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or Counterculture of the 1960s, 1960s counterculture). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, parody music, music, Theatre, theater, television and film, animation, and Video game, gaming. The writer and critic John Gross observes in his ''Oxford Book of Parodies'', that parody seems to flourish on te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theories Of Humor
Although humor is a phenomenon experienced by most humans, its exact cause is a topic of heavy debate. There are many theories of humor which attempt to explain what it is, what social functions it serves, and what would be considered humorous. Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory. Among current humor researchers, there is yet no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable, though the incongruity theory is very often considered the most dominant. Some proponents of each of these most commonly known theories originally claimed that theirs and theirs alone explained all humor. There is, however, consensus that these theories, especially incongruity, have been building blocks for some later ones. Many theorists also now hold that the three main theories are of narrower focus than origin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonsense
Nonsense is a form of communication, via speech, writing, or any other formal logic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. In ordinary usage, nonsense is sometimes synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it for reasons ranging from pure comic amusement or satire, to illustrating a point about language or reasoning. In the philosophy of language and philosophy of science, nonsense is distinguished from sense or meaningfulness, and attempts have been made to come up with a coherent and consistent method of distinguishing sense from nonsense. It is also an important field of study in cryptography regarding separating a signal from noise. Literary The phrase " Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. However, this can easily be confused with poetic symbolism. The individual ''words'' make sense and are arranged ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Candide
( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, The Optimist'' (1762); and ''Candide: Optimism'' (1947). A young man, Candide, lives a sheltered life in an Garden of Eden, Edenic paradise, being indoctrinated with Gottfried Leibniz#Theodicy and optimism, Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. This lifestyle is abruptly ended, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes ''Candide'' with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds". ''Candide'' is characterized by its tone as well as its erratic, fantastical, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reductio Ad Absurdum
In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical argument'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction. This argument form traces back to Ancient Greek philosophy and has been used throughout history in both formal mathematical and philosophical reasoning, as well as in debate. In mathematics, the technique is called ''proof by contradiction''. In formal logic, this technique is captured by an axiom for "Reductio ad Absurdum", normally given the abbreviation RAA, which is expressible in propositional logic. This axiom is the introduction rule for negation (see ''negation introduction''). Examples The "absurd" conclusion of a ''reductio ad absurdum'' argument can take a range of forms, as these examples show: * The Earth cannot be flat; otherwise, since the Earth is assumed to be finite in extent, we would find peo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appeal To Ridicule
Appeal to ridicule (also called appeal to mockery, ''ad absurdo'', or the horse laugh) is an informal fallacy which presents an opponent's argument as absurd, ridiculous, or humorous, and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. Description Appeal to ridicule is often found in the form of comparing a multi-layered circumstance or argument to a laughably commonplace event or to another irrelevant thing based on comedic timing, or wordplay. This is a rhetorical tactic that mocks an opponent's argument or position, attempting to inspire a strong emotional reaction (making it a type of appeal to emotion) in the audience and to highlight any counter-intuitive aspects of that argument, making it appear foolish and contrary to common sense. This is typically done by mocking the argument's representative foundation in an uncharitable and oversimplified way. The person using the tactic is often sarcastic in their argument. Examples This dialogue presents an example of appeal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Warburton
William Warburton (24 December 16987 June 1779) was an English writer, literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759 until his death. He edited editions of the works of his friend Alexander Pope, and of William Shakespeare. Life Warburton was born on 24 December 1698 at Newark, England, Newark, Nottinghamshire, where his father, George Warburton was town clerk. He was educated at Oakham and Newark grammar schools, and in 1714, he was articled to Mr Kirke, an attorney, at East Markham. In 1719, after serving his articles he returned to Newark, where he began to practise as a solicitor, but, having studied Latin and Greek language, Greek, changed his mind and was ordained deacon by the Archbishop of York in 1723. He was ordained as a priest in 1726, and in the same year began to associate with literary circles in London. Sir Robert Sutton (Lincolnshire), Robert Sutton gave Warburton the small living of Greasley, in Nottinghamshire, exchanged next year for that o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Big Man (film)
''Little Big Man'' is a 1970 American revisionist Western film directed by Arthur Penn, adapted by Calder Willingham from Thomas Berger (US novelist), Thomas Berger's Little Big Man (novel), 1964 novel of the same title. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey and Richard Mulligan. The film follows the life of a white man who was raised by members of the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century, and then attempts to reintegrate with Settler, American pioneer society. Although broadly categorized as a Western film, Western, or an epic film, epic, the film encompasses several literary/film genres, including comedy film, comedy, drama film, drama and adventure film, adventure. It parodies typical tropes of the Western genre, contrasting the lives of white settlers and Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans throughout the progression of the boy's life. ''Little Big Man'' is an early revisionist Western in its sympathetic de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
