Humor in HP

[Jerri&Dan Chase]

No: HPFGUIDX 186546

> Carol again:
> Thanks for retrieving my lost post, which I'd forgotten about.
>The reason I posted it on OT was that I was hoping for someone
>British to help me with the famous concept of understated British
>humor. I don't think that JKR's sense of humor quite qualifies most
>of the time. The puns might: "griffin door knocker" (Gryffindor
>knocker) is so subtle that it probably goes right over the heads of
>most readers. But the examples you mention, especially the teenage
>boy humor (so crude that it strikes me as preteen) and the slapstick
>are anything but understated. JKR has a penchant for hyperbole,
>especially in dealing (sorry to say) with fat people. Slughorn, for
>example, takes up a quarter of the shop when he encounters the
>Trio at Honeydukes. Dudley at age thirteen or so (I forgot which
>book) has finally succeeded in becoming as broad as he is tall.

I have been thinking about JKR's use of Humor in the HP books and this 
discussion and relating it to other British authors whose humor I enjoy a 
lot.  I am an American who reads a lot of books by English and Scottish 
authors.  Some whose humor I enjoy include Georgette Heyer (who has a 
character named Flitwick and a nasty tutor named Snape), Angela Thirkell, 
and Dorothy L. Sayers (whose Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries we know that JKR 
has read and enjoyed.)  However, one English author whose humor seems very 
related to that in the HP books is P.G. Wodehouse.  He started writing 
English Boarding School stories, and is best known for the Jeeves and 
Wooster series.  These contain lots of physical humor, an "aunt" complex, 
stealing of policeman's helmets and cow creamers and cats and so on.

Also, the humor of the HP books as well as many aspects of the boarding 
school life, including inter-house rivalry can also find parallels in 
Kipling's series of short stories, now most available in book form, called 
Stalky and Co.

Now, how to define humor, and explain why something is funny to one person 
and not to another, that is a more complex issue.

Jerri