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36-549: In a broader sense, "punch line" can also refer to the unexpected and funny conclusion of any performance, situation or story. The origin of the term is unknown . Even though the comedic formula using the classic "set-up, premise, punch line" format was well-established in Vaudeville by the beginning of the 20th century, the actual term "punch line" is first documented in the 1910s; the Merriam-Webster dictionary pegs

72-553: A cartoonist and engraver. It ceased publication in 1850. Writing Drama Writing Drama (French: La dramaturgie) is a treatise by French writer and filmmaker Yves Lavandier , originally published in 1994, revised in 1997, 2004, 2008, 2011 and 2014. The English version was translated from the French by Bernard Besserglik and published in 2005. The book exists also in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Writing Drama explores

108-401: A dramatic pause before the punchline is delivered. In laboratory settings, however, none of these changes are employed at a statistically significant level in the production of humorous narratives . Rather, the pitch and loudness of the punchline are comparable to those of the ending of any narrative, humorous or not. In order to better elucidate the structure and function of the punch line, it

144-466: A punchline. However, jokes following the AAB structure are consistently rated as being funnier than their AB or AAAB counterparts. Punch (magazine) Punch, or The London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells . Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s, when it helped to coin

180-551: A style called AAB, (referred to as an A-A-A' triad by Yves Lavandier in Writing Drama ) where a joke is made up of a set of three, the first two of which share some common attribute, and the third represents a deviation from that attribute. Under these conditions, the third item in the set—the B—is the punchline. Rozin gives the following example as exemplifying this structure: A Some men are about to be executed. The guard brings

216-423: Is insufficient to account for the structure of humour. [...] Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity." Resolution generates laughter. There are many folk theories of how people deliver punchlines, such as punchlines being louder and at a higher pitch than the speech preceding it, or

252-493: Is nothing without lemon". Mayhew ceased to be joint editor in 1842 and became "suggestor in chief" until he severed his connection in 1845. The magazine initially struggled for readers, except for an 1842 Almanack issue which shocked its creators by selling 90,000 copies. In December 1842 due to financial difficulties, the magazine was sold to Bradbury and Evans , both printers and publishers. Bradbury and Evans capitalised on newly evolving mass printing technologies and also were

288-563: Is recognised as its first woman contributor. In the 1860s and '70s, conservative Punch faced competition from upstart liberal journal Fun , but after about 1874, Fun' s fortunes faded. At Evans's café in London, the two journals had "round tables" in competition with each other. After months of financial difficulty and lack of market success, Punch became a staple for British drawing rooms because of its sophisticated humour and absence of offensive material, especially when viewed against

324-411: Is the nonsense joke, defined as having "a surprising or incongruous punch line", which provides either no resolution at all or only a partial, unsatisfactory resolution. One example of this is the no soap radio punch line: "Two elephants were taking a bath. One said, 'Please pass the soap.' The other replied, 'No soap, radio.'" Here the anticipated resolution to the joke is absent and the audience becomes

360-511: Is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret] the joke text." To produce the humor in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e., scripts) need to be both compatible with the joke text and opposite or incompatible with each other. Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist, independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution". He explains that "incongruity alone

396-423: Is useful to look at some joke forms that purposely remove or avoid the punch line in their narrative. Shaggy dog stories are long-winded anti-jokes in which the punch line is deliberately anticlimactic. The humor here lies in fooling the audience into expecting a typical joke with a punch line. Instead they listen and listen to nothing funny and end up themselves as the butt of the joke. Another type of anti-joke

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432-527: The Westminster Review , which published a 53-page illustrated article on Punch's first two volumes. Historian Richard Altick writes that "To judge from the number of references to it in the private letters and memoirs of the 1840s... Punch had become a household word within a year or two of its founding, beginning in the middle class and soon reaching the pinnacle of society, royalty itself". Increasing in readership and popularity throughout

468-572: The English language , including The Crystal Palace , and the " Curate's egg " (first seen in an 1895 cartoon by George du Maurier ). Several British humour classics were first serialised in Punch , such as the Diary of a Nobody and 1066 and All That . Towards the end of the 19th century, the artistic roster included Harry Furniss , Linley Sambourne , Francis Carruthers Gould , and Phil May . Among

504-526: The archives was acquired by the British Library , including the Punch table. The long, oval, Victorian table was brought into the offices some time around 1855, and was used for staff meetings and on other occasions. The wooden surface is scarred with the carved initials of the magazine's long-term writers, artists, and editors, as well as six invited "strangers", including James Thurber and Charles III (then Prince of Wales ). Mark Twain declined

540-458: The butt of the joke. A joke contains a single story with a single punch line at the end. In the analysis of longer humorous texts, an expanded model is needed to map the narratological structure . With this in mind, the general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) was expanded to include longer humorous texts together with jokes, using the GTVH narrative structure to categorize them. A new term "jab line"

576-507: The contemporary, social, and political scene, Punch became a household name in Victorian Britain. Sales of 40,000 copies a week by 1850 rose above 100,000 by 1910. After the 1940s, when its circulation peaked, it went into a long decline, closing in 1992. It was revived in 1996, but closed again in 2002. Punch was founded on 17 July 1841 by Henry Mayhew and wood-engraver Ebenezer Landells , on an initial investment of £25. It

612-459: The course of pages, Yves Lavandier develops several governing ideas. According to him: Writing Drama is considered a reference textbook amongst European playwrights and scriptwriters. According to Jacques Audiard , Writing Drama is on par with Aristotle 's Poetics . Francis Veber said it is "the most thorough and challenging work of its kind to come out since the birth of scriptwriting". In 2006, Frédéric Beigbeder called Yves Lavandier

648-420: The end. Whereas the earlier version of Punch prominently featured the clownish character Punchinello (Punch of Punch and Judy ) performing antics on front covers, the resurrected Punch did not use the character, but featured on its weekly covers a photograph of a boxing glove, thus informing its readers that the new magazine intended its name to mean "punch" in the sense of a boxing blow. In 2004, much of

684-416: The first man forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" Suddenly the man yells, "Earthquake!" Everyone is startled and looks around. In all the confusion, the first man escapes. A The guard brings the second man forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" Suddenly

720-411: The first use in 1916. A linguistic interpretation of the mechanics of the punch line response is posited by Victor Raskin in his script-based semantic theory of humor . Humor is evoked when a trigger, contained in the punch line, causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interpretation. "The punch line

756-577: The invitation, saying that the already-carved initials of William Makepeace Thackeray included his own. Punch was influential throughout the British Empire , and in countries including Turkey, India, Japan, and China, with Punch imitators appearing in Cairo, Yokohama, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. A Canadian version, Punch in Canada , was launched on 1 January 1849, by John H. Walker (1831–99),

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792-422: The man yells, "Tornado!" In the confusion, the second man escapes. B By now the last man has it all figured out. The guard brings him forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" and the last man yells, "Fire!" According to this theory, the punchline is always the deviation, and it does not matter how many instances of A occur for there to be

828-676: The mechanisms of dramatic story telling. The author makes a clear distinction between what is written to be seen and/or heard ( theater , cinema , television , radio , opera and to a lesser extent comic books ) and what is written to be read ( literature ). The book's principle is the same as Aristotle 's Poetics . Yves Lavandier examines works by major scriptwriters and playwrights ( Samuel Beckett , Bertolt Brecht , Charles Chaplin , Hergé , Alfred Hitchcock , Henrik Ibsen , Ernst Lubitsch , Molière , Dino Risi , William Shakespeare , Sophocles , Orson Welles , Billy Wilder , etc.) in order to answer three questions: The author scans all

864-560: The narrative in which they appear (i.e., they do not disrupt the flow of the narrative, because they either are indispensable to the development of the 'plot' or of the text, or they are not antagonistic to it)". Using the expanded narrative structure of the GTVH and this new terminology of jab lines, literature and humor researchers now have a single theoretical framework, with which they can analyze and map any kind of verbal humor, including novels, short stories, TV sitcoms, plays, movies as well as jokes. Felicitous jokes are often formatted in

900-432: The outstanding cartoonists of the following century were Bernard Partridge , H. M. Bateman , Bernard Hollowood (who also edited the magazine from 1957 to 1968), Kenneth Mahood, and Norman Thelwell . Circulation broke the 100,000 mark around 1910, and peaked in 1947–1948 at 175,000 to 184,000. Sales declined steadily thereafter; ultimately, the magazine was forced to close in 2002 after 161 years of publication. Punch

936-485: The publishers for Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray . The term " cartoon " to refer to comic drawings was first used in Punch in 1843, when the Houses of Parliament were to be decorated with murals, and "cartoons" for the mural were displayed for the public; the term "cartoon" then meant a finished preliminary sketch on a large piece of cardboard, or cartone in Italian. Punch humorously appropriated

972-490: The remainder of the 1840s and '50s, Punch was the success story of a threepenny weekly paper that had become one of the most talked-about and enjoyed periodicals. Punch enjoyed an audience including Elizabeth Barrett , Robert Browning , Thomas Carlyle , Edward FitzGerald , Charlotte Brontë , Queen Victoria , Prince Albert , Ralph Waldo Emerson , Emily Dickinson , Herman Melville , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , and James Russell Lowell . Punch gave several phrases to

1008-451: The rights to the name, and Punch was relaunched later that year. The new version of the magazine was intended to be a spoiler aimed at Private Eye , which had published many items critical of Fayed. Punch never became profitable in its new incarnation, and at the end of May 2002, it was announced as once more ceasing publication. Press reports quoted a loss of £16 million over the six years of publication, with only 6,000 subscribers at

1044-511: The satirical press of the time. The Times and the Sunday paper News of the World used small pieces from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, a privilege not enjoyed by any other comic publication. Punch shared a friendly relationship with not only The Times , but also journals aimed at intellectual audiences such as

1080-406: The term " cartoon " in its modern sense as a humorous illustration. Artists at Punch included John Tenniel who, from 1850, was the chief cartoon artist at the magazine for over 50 years. The editors took the anarchic puppet Mr Punch, of Punch and Judy , as their mascot—the character appears in many magazine covers—with the character also an inspiration for the magazine's name. With its satire of

1116-890: The term to refer to its political cartoons, and the popularity of the Punch cartoons led to the term's widespread use. Illustrator Archibald Henning designed the cover of the magazine's first issues. The cover design varied in the early years, though Richard Doyle designed what became the magazine's masthead in 1849. Artists who published in Punch during the 1840s and 1850s included John Leech , Doyle, John Tenniel , and Charles Keene . This group became known as "The Punch Brotherhood", which also included Charles Dickens, who joined Bradbury and Evans after leaving Chapman and Hall in 1843. Punch' s authors and artists also contributed to another Bradbury and Evans literary magazine called Once A Week (est. 1859), created in response to Dickens' departure from Household Words . Helen Hoppner Coode contributed nineteen drawings to Punch and

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1152-429: The tools of dramatic narrative: conflict, protagonist, obstacles, suspense, characterisation, three-act structure, preparation, dramatic irony, comedy, activity, dialogue. A play written by Molière , The School for Wives , and a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock , North by Northwest , are analysed in detail. Several appendices deal with writing for children, drama and literature, short films, documentaries, etc. In

1188-549: Was collected in book formats from the late 19th century, which included Pick of the Punch annuals with cartoons and text features, Punch and the War (a 1941 collection of WWII-related cartoons), and A Big Bowl of Punch – which was republished a number of times. Many Punch cartoonists of the late 20th century published collections of their own, partly based on Punch contributions. In early 1996, businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed bought

1224-437: Was introduced to designate humor within the body of a text, as opposed to the punch line, which is always placed at the end. The jab line is functionally identical to the punch line, except that it can be positioned anywhere within the text, not just at the end. "Jab and punch lines are semantically indistinguishable (...), but they differ at a narratological level." Additionally, "jab lines are humorous elements fully integrated in

1260-436: Was jointly edited by Mayhew and Mark Lemon . It was subtitled The London Charivari in homage to Charles Philipon 's French satirical humour magazine Le Charivari . Reflecting their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took for their name and masthead the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy ; the name also referred to a joke made early on about one of the magazine's first editors, Lemon, that " punch

1296-540: Was widely emulated worldwide and was popular throughout the British Empire . The experience of Britons in British colonies, especially in India, influenced Punch and its iconography. Tenniel's Punch cartoons of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny led to a surge in the magazine's popularity. India was frequently caricatured in Punch and was an important source of knowledge on the subcontinent for British readers. Punch material

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