The last reading of the ‘Tales
of Juha’ was clearly my least favorite of the book. Juha in my opinion is a witty and funny
guy. Though Juha is a flexible character
of Arabian folk tales, I did not see him playing different roles in today’s reading. There were a couple of reasons as to why I
didn’t find this reading particularly funny.
It was too
monotonous. Many of the stories today were repetitive. They were repetitive
in the themes and the characters. For
example, there were stories one after the other wherein Juha used the jingling
of coins to pay someone who accused him/claimant of indirectly using services. It was funny, maybe very slightly, the first
time I read it but the same story being repeated over and over only threw me
off.
It wasn’t that funny.
All of the previous stories were funny in that they exploited the incongruity
theory and superiority theory well. The last couple of chapters did not clearly
implement any of the theories as described by Morreall. The only story that was
funny in my opinion was that of Juha getting milk in a miserly city. I found it funny because it was completely
outrageous. I would have expected Juha
to have been the trickster here but he was at the other end of the joke.
These last couple of chapters could have been funny if not
for these two reasons that I’ve mentioned above. Overall, Juha was an enjoyable
character and definitely made this
course a lot more fun by adding a global perspective to the study of
humor.
I agree that the last reading of Juha was not the funniest; however, I do think they were among the most interesting. However, I did also find them repetitive with Tamerlane and the donkeys. In fact, while I was reading I thought that I had already read many of the stories.
ReplyDeleteI agree and disagree to an extent. I did not laugh at many of these stories and certainly did not think they were they most funny short stories we’ve read this semester; however, I might have enjoyed some of them the most out of all our readings so far. I think it’s important to consider that this is a compilation of folklore, so naturally stories will resemble one another. For me, Juha’s wit, cleverness and even wisdom are what made this book worth reading, and perhaps reading again sometime down the road.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the last section wasn't as funny. For me, it was the fact that Juha has become a likeable guy from our previous readings. When Juha was the butt of the joke, I found it less funny because I enjoyed seeing him succeed. I have a feeling my opinion might have been different if we had read the last section first though.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assertion that the later readings were not as funny. I think this is primarily due to the order in which we read the text. We as readers became very familiar with Juha as an witty, Harlequino type. When things flipped around and he became the dunce, it was a difficult transition. Overall, though, Juha was a surprisingly funny fellow.
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