Title: Irony and humor in Princess Smartypants
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2016, vol. 42, iss. 1, pp. [93]-111
Extent
[93]-111
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2016-1-5
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/136085
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The aim of this paper is to analyse the postmodern picturebook Princess Smartypants, written and illustrated by Babette Cole, taking into account the relationship between the words and the images and the incongruities posed not only between the text and the images but also between this tale and other fairytales. Generic conventions, background knowledge and intertextuality are key aspects to identify and/or to solve the incongruities, which provoke irony and humor.
References
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[33] Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott (2001) How Picturebooks Work. New York and London: Garland Publishing.
[34] Nodelman, Perry (1988) Words about pictures: The narrative art of children's picture books. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
[35] Painter, Claire, Jim Martin and Leo Unsworth (2013) Reading Visual Narratives. Image Analysis of Children's Picture Books. Sheffield and Bristol, CT: Equinox.
[36] Pantaleo, Sylvia (2004) 'Young children and radical change characteristics in picture books'. Reading Teacher 58 (2), 178–187. | DOI 10.1598/RT.58.2.6
[37] Pantaleo, Sylvia and Lawrence Sipe (2008) 'Introduction. Postmodernism and picturebooks'. In: Lawrence Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.) Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality. New York and London: Routledge.
[38] Quintilian, Marcus F. (1999) Instituciones Oratorias. Ed. Alfonso Ortega Carmona. Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia.
[39] Raskin, Victor (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster: D. Reidel.
[40] Roche, Mary (2015) Developing Children's Critical Thinking through Picturebooks: A guide for primary and early years students and teachers. London and New York: Routledge.
[41] Schaffer, Rachel (1982) Vocal clues for irony in English. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University.
[42] Scott, Biljana (2004) 'Picturing irony: The subversive power of photography'. Visual Communication 3 (31), 31–59. | DOI 10.1177/1470357204039597
[43] Sell, Roger (2002) Children's Literature as Communication. The ChiLPA Project. Amsterdam and Philadelpia: John Benjamins.
[44] Shanks, Caitlin (2008) 'Gender roles and the Princess in American Literature and Society'. The Journal of Undergraduate Research. University of Kansas, 25–34.
[45] Siddall, Jane (1997) Postmodernism and Children's Picture books. Unpublished thesis. Edith Cowan University.
[46] Sipe, Lawrence (1998) 'How Picture Books work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships.' Children's Literature in Education 29 (2), 97–108. | DOI 10.1023/A:1022459009182
[47] Sipe, Lawrence and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds). (2008) Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody and Self Referentiality. London and New York: Routledge.
[48] Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson (1981) 'Irony and the use-mention distinction'. In: Peter Cole (ed.) Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 295–318.
[49] Unsworth, Leo (2008) 'Explicating intermodal meaning-making in media and literary texts: Towards a metalanguage of image/text relations'. In: Andrew Burn and Cal Durrant (eds.) Media Teaching: Language, Audience, Production. London: AATE-NATE and Wakefield Press, 48–80.
[50] Van Meerbergen, Sara (2012) 'Play, parody, intertextuality and interaction: Postmodern Flemish picture books as semiotic playgrounds'. Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v3i0.20075. | DOI 10.3402/blft.v3i0.20075
[51] Wolfenbarger, Carol D. and Lawrence Sipe (2007). 'A Unique Visual and Literary Art Form: Recent Research on Picturebooks'. Language Arts 83 (3), 273–280.
[52] Yus, Francisco (2016) Humour and Relevance. Topics in Humour Research. Amsterdam and Phila-delpia: John Benjamins.
[2] Anstey, Michele (2002) 'It's not All Black and White': Postmodern Picturebooks and New Literacies.' Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 45 (6), 444–457. | DOI 10.1598/JAAL.45.6.1
[3] Attardo, Salvatore (2000) 'Irony as relevant inappropriateness'. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 793–826. | DOI 10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00070-3
[4] Attardo, Salvatore (2001) Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Boston and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
[5] Bader, Barbara. (1976) American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast within. New York: Macmillan.
[6] Beauvais, Clementine (2015) 'What's in "the gap"?A glance down the central concept of picture-book theory'. Nordic Journal of Childlit Aesthetics, 6.
[7] Colston, Herbert L. and Jennifer O'Brien (2000) 'Contrast and pragmatics in figurative language: anything understatement can do, irony can do better'. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1557–1583. | DOI 10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00110-1
[8] Culler, Jonathan (1975) Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP.
[9] Davies, Bronwyn (1989) Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tales: Preschool Children and Gender. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
[10] Dombey, Henrietta (1992) 'Lessons learnt at Bedtime'. In: Keith Kimberley, Margaret Meek and Jane Miller (eds.) New Readings: Contributions to an Understanding of Literacy. London: A. & C. Black, 29–36.
[11] Dresang, Eliza T. (1999) Radical change: Books for youth in a digital age. New York: H. W. Wilson.
[12] El Refaie, Elisabeth (2009) 'What makes us lagh? Verbo-visual Humour in Newspaper Cartoons'. In: Eija Ventola and A. Jesús Moya (eds.) The World Told and The World Shown. Multisemiotic Issues. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 75–89.
[13] Feaver, William (1977) When we were Young: Two Centuries of Children's Book Illustrations. London: Thames and Hudson.
[14] Flieger, Jerry A. (1991) The Purloined Punch Line: Freud's comic theory and the Postmodern Text. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.
[15] Gibbs, Raymond and O'Brien, Jennifer (1991) 'Psychological aspects of irony understanding.' Journal of Pragmatics 16 (6), 523–530. | DOI 10.1016/0378-2166(91)90101-3
[16] Giora, Rachel (1995) 'On Irony and Negation'. Discourse Processes 19, 239–264.
[17] Giora, Rachel (2000) 'Irony'. In: Jef Verschueeren, Jan-Ola Östman and Jan Blommaert (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[18] Goldstone, Bette P. (1999) Brave new worlds: The changing image of the picture book. New Advocate 12, 331–344.
[19] Goldstone, Bette P. (2002) 'Whaz up with our books? Changing picture book codes and teaching implications'. The Reading Teaching 55, 362–369.
[20] Grice, H. Paul (1989) Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[21] Grieve, Ann (1993) 'Postmodernism in Picturebooks'. Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature 4 (3), 15–25.
[22] Iser, Wolfgang (1974) The implied Reader. Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
[23] Johnson, Samuel (1755 [2006]). A Dictionary of the English Language: An Anthology. Ed. David Crystal. London: Penguin Classics.
[24] Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina (1999) 'Metalinguistic Awareness and the child developing concept of irony: The Relationship between Pictures and Text in Ironic Picture Books'. The Lion and the Unicorn. A Critical Journal of Children's Literature 23 (2), 157–183. | DOI 10.1353/uni.1999.0024
[25] Lewis, David (1996) 'Going Along with Mr Gumpy: Polysystemy and Play in the Modern Picture Book'. Signal 80, 105–119.
[26] Lewis, David (2006 [2001]) Reading contemporary picturebooks: Picturing text. London: Routledge Falmer.
[27] Moebius, William (1986) 'Introduction to picture books' codes'. Word and Image 2 (2), 141–158. | DOI 10.1080/02666286.1986.10435598
[28] Moya, A. Jesús (2014) A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children. A Systemic Functional Approach. London: Equinox.
[29] Moya, A. Jesús and María J. Pinar (2008) 'Compositional, interpersonal and representational meaings in a children's narrative. A multimodal discourse analysis'. Journal of Pragmatics 40 (9), 1601–1619. | DOI 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.019
[30] Moya, A. Jesús and María J. Pinar (2009) 'On interacton of image and verbal text in a picture book. A multimodal and systemic functional study'. In: Eija Ventola and A. Jesús Moya (eds.) The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 107–123.
[31] Nikolajeva, Maria (2008) 'Play and Playfulness in Postmodern Picturebooks'. In: Lawrence Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.) Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody and Self Referentiality. New York and London: Routledge, 55–74.
[32] Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott (2000) 'The dynamics of picturebook communication'. Children's Literature in Education 31 (4), 225–239. | DOI 10.1023/A:1026426902123
[33] Nikolajeva, Maria and Carole Scott (2001) How Picturebooks Work. New York and London: Garland Publishing.
[34] Nodelman, Perry (1988) Words about pictures: The narrative art of children's picture books. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
[35] Painter, Claire, Jim Martin and Leo Unsworth (2013) Reading Visual Narratives. Image Analysis of Children's Picture Books. Sheffield and Bristol, CT: Equinox.
[36] Pantaleo, Sylvia (2004) 'Young children and radical change characteristics in picture books'. Reading Teacher 58 (2), 178–187. | DOI 10.1598/RT.58.2.6
[37] Pantaleo, Sylvia and Lawrence Sipe (2008) 'Introduction. Postmodernism and picturebooks'. In: Lawrence Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.) Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality. New York and London: Routledge.
[38] Quintilian, Marcus F. (1999) Instituciones Oratorias. Ed. Alfonso Ortega Carmona. Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia.
[39] Raskin, Victor (1985) Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster: D. Reidel.
[40] Roche, Mary (2015) Developing Children's Critical Thinking through Picturebooks: A guide for primary and early years students and teachers. London and New York: Routledge.
[41] Schaffer, Rachel (1982) Vocal clues for irony in English. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University.
[42] Scott, Biljana (2004) 'Picturing irony: The subversive power of photography'. Visual Communication 3 (31), 31–59. | DOI 10.1177/1470357204039597
[43] Sell, Roger (2002) Children's Literature as Communication. The ChiLPA Project. Amsterdam and Philadelpia: John Benjamins.
[44] Shanks, Caitlin (2008) 'Gender roles and the Princess in American Literature and Society'. The Journal of Undergraduate Research. University of Kansas, 25–34.
[45] Siddall, Jane (1997) Postmodernism and Children's Picture books. Unpublished thesis. Edith Cowan University.
[46] Sipe, Lawrence (1998) 'How Picture Books work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships.' Children's Literature in Education 29 (2), 97–108. | DOI 10.1023/A:1022459009182
[47] Sipe, Lawrence and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds). (2008) Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody and Self Referentiality. London and New York: Routledge.
[48] Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson (1981) 'Irony and the use-mention distinction'. In: Peter Cole (ed.) Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 295–318.
[49] Unsworth, Leo (2008) 'Explicating intermodal meaning-making in media and literary texts: Towards a metalanguage of image/text relations'. In: Andrew Burn and Cal Durrant (eds.) Media Teaching: Language, Audience, Production. London: AATE-NATE and Wakefield Press, 48–80.
[50] Van Meerbergen, Sara (2012) 'Play, parody, intertextuality and interaction: Postmodern Flemish picture books as semiotic playgrounds'. Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v3i0.20075. | DOI 10.3402/blft.v3i0.20075
[51] Wolfenbarger, Carol D. and Lawrence Sipe (2007). 'A Unique Visual and Literary Art Form: Recent Research on Picturebooks'. Language Arts 83 (3), 273–280.
[52] Yus, Francisco (2016) Humour and Relevance. Topics in Humour Research. Amsterdam and Phila-delpia: John Benjamins.