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To study wordplay/word games is essentially an exercise in close reading. We will explore basic premises of verbal humour, linguistic mannerisms, and literary styles by scrutinising textual micro-structures and rhetorical strategies in a wide variety of texts from the comic tradition. The pun (or paronomasia--to give it its proper technical designation) is the most obvious type of wordplay (Shakespeare, incidentally, is said to have included some 3000 puns in his oeuvre). Other forms of wordplay include aphorisms, graffiti, limericks, nonsense poetry. Among the more elementary types we have palindromes, tongue-twisters, clerihews, malapropisms, spoonerisms, and (Cockney) rhyming slang. Apart form the obvious sources of the oral tradition (i.e., the ubiquitous “anon.”), examples will be taken from English Literature; authors featured will include William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Dylan Thomas. Recommended / Required Reading:
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Words at Play