Puns

Like the pharmacist who proclaimed 'we dispense with accuracy', the pun embraces many contradictions. Sometimes a display of humour, folly or even truth, the pun can catch us out, make us laugh, and it always forces us to recognize the richness of our language.From the cryptic language of the Sphinx, to Shakespeare's unsurpassed wordplay, through to Donne, Beckett, Joyce and right up to the present day with its compressed headlines (Incest more common than thought in British Isles) sound bites and car stickers (surfers do it standing up) the pun is still very much alive and kicking. This entertaining and erudite book, thoroughly revised for this edition, looks at the pun, in both English and French, as a humorous way of showing off our mastery of the language and as a way of accentuating or hiding our feelings. Finally it assesses the value of the pun and restores the much-maligned wordplay to its rightful place in the language.