WRITING POLITICAL HUMOR

Poli 311.01 (W,IT) Professor Sammy Basu

History of Dictionary and Political worldplay

Cynicism

The cynics, a Greek philosophic school founded in the 4th century BC by Antisthenes (c 444 - 371 BC)

Its best-known member was

Diogenes of Sinope.

The cynics name is perhaps from Greek kynikos, (doglike) 

In which case it likely refers to their severely critical philosophic style;

Name may also be derived from Cynosarges,

the name of the gymnasium in witch the group met under Antisthenes.

http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/Lecture-05/04.publiclife.html

http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/diogenes.htm

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

The Prince (1513).

Diabolical Machiavellian and Machiavellianism

Aphorism

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

h

h

Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a

Common-Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill. London: Andrew Crooke, 1651.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/hobbes/

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3x.htm

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/hobbes.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/monarchs_leaders/hobbes_01.shtml

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/image/leviathan.jpg

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/Hobbespi.htm

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

h

h

French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist

The Philosophical Dictionary, 1752

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7308/

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/hum_303/voltaire.html

http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volindex.html

Noah Webster (1758-1843)

The Dictionary Wars I: Noah Webster

Noah Webster was a boring old snoot and his Dictionary is practically holier than the Bible. Why?

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/webster/

The Dictionary Wars II: Webster vs. Worcester

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/worcester/

A battle between two Dictionaries captures the imaginations of pre-Civil War America

The Dictionary Wars III

Why Noah Webster won the Dictionary Wars -- even after he died.

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/merriam/

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

h

The American Language (1919)

http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/h.l.mencken.asp

http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/mencken.asp

http://www.io.com/~gibbonsb/mencken.html

George Orwell (1903-1950). pen name of Eric Arthur Blair

‘Funny, But Not Vulgar’, Leader, (28 July 1945)

http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/essays/orwell_2.html

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/funny/e/e_funny.htm

‘Politics and the English Language’, (1946)

Excerpt from "The Principles of Newspeak"

An appendix to the novel, 1984 (1948)

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html

http://www.newspeak.com/Newspeak.htm

http://www.artcontext.com/remote/newspeak.html

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns_frames.html

Contemporary

http://polisat.com/Political_Dictionary.htm

http://www.skog.de/endiction.htm

The New Political Dictionary

http://www.logophilia.com/jargon/jargon_toc.html

The New Hacker's Dictionary

http://www.scn.org/news/newspeak/

American Newspeak

Word Collisions By Wayne Grytting

William Safire