الفهرس 
Toward a theory of postmodern humorOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The main purpose of this thesis is to arrive at a comprehensive and inclusive theory of postmodern humor which can encompass the wide variety of humorous practices in postmodern American fiction.
The thesis also strives to highlight the reasons behind the widespread use of humor in postmodern American fiction and how it reflects the chaotic status quo of the postmodern society. Novels by Robert Coover, John Barth and Thomas Pynchon are used as case studies to arrive at a final formula for a theory of postmodern humor in American fiction.
Two novels were chosen from amongst the oeuvre of each novelist; one marking the beginning of his career and the other the most recent in order to cover the whole postmodern era with all its variables and intricacies.
This thesis is divided into four chapters:
Chapter one works as a preliminary introduction to the major aspects of the study; the paradox of defining humor, theories of humor throughout the ages, aesthetics of humor, and black humor as the first wave of postmodern artistic production. By the end of the chapter, both the need for a theory of humor in postmodern American fiction and the cruciality of the aesthetic strategies of humor to the forming of such theory is pretty clear. The following chapters offer case studies of the three aesthetic modes of humor idiosyncratic to postmodern American fiction; carnivalesque, parody and irony.
Chapter two focuses on the employment of the topoi of carnivalism in two of Robert Coover’s novels; The Public Burning (1977) and Gerald’s Party (1985).
Chapter three explores how Thomas Pynchon resorts to using various modes of irony as an aesthe c strategy of humor in two of his novels; The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Against the Day (2006).
Chapter four investigates the manifold uses of parody, especially self‐reflexive parody in two of John Barth’s novels; The Sot‐ Weed Factor (1960) and Coming Soon (2001). Finally, the study posits that taken individually, any of the defining features of postmodern humor may be ascribed to a general theory of humor. But, when we find dense layers of intertextuality shaped by the reader and the author, the comic, the ironic, the carnivalistic, the self‐reflexive, and a propensity to engage in language games within a text, we can conclude that we have encountered a set of characteristics that, taken as a whole, may define postmodern humor. Postmodern humor is a carnivalized genre that invites multiple, oppositional readings, and is created and recreated by multiple intertextual relationship between reader, author, text, cultural heritage, and technology. These dense multi‐layered intertextual relationships which define postmodern humor also confine postmodern humor; it is a genre bound by the massive, ever‐changing shaping forces of the contemporary times.