Preface -- 0.1 A cautionary tale -- 0.2 Acknowledgments -- 0.2.1 Publications -- 0.2.2 People -- 1 Preliminaries -- 1.1 The SSTH -- 1.2 The Structure of a Semantic Theory -- 1.3 The Semantic Theory of Humor -- 1.4 The GTVH -- 1.5 Outline of the Theory -- 1.6 Methodological and metatheoretical issues -- 2 Literature Review -- 2.1 The Expansionist Approach -- 2.2 The Revisionist Approach -- 3 Semantic Analysis and Humor Analysis -- 3.1 Semantic and Pragmatic Tools -- 3.2 How is information added to the storage area? -- 3.3 The Text World -- 3.4 Surface structure recall -- 3.5 Summing up -- 4 Beyond the Joke -- 4.1 Narrative vs. Conversation -- 4.2 Joke cycles -- 4.3 Conclusion -- 5 A Theory of Humorous Texts -- 5.1 Method of analysis -- 5.2 Narratives -- 5.3 Lines and their Configurations -- 5.4 A typology of line position -- 5.5 Humorous Plots -- 5.6 Humorous Techniques -- 5.7 General Considerations -- 6 Diffuse Disjunction -- 6.1 Register humor -- 6.2 Irony -- 7 Case Studies -- 7.1 Chuckles Bites the Dust: the opening sequence -- 7.2 Sexton's Cinderella -- 7.3 A Merry Discourse of Meum and Tuum -- 7.4 Il nome della rosa: Analysis of one strand -- 7.5 Han Rybeck ou le coup de l'etrier -- 8 "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" by Oscar Wilde -- 8.1 CHAPTER I -- 8.2 CHAPTER II -- 8.3 CHAPTER III -- 8.4 CHAPTER IV -- 8.5 CHAPTER V -- 8.6 CHAPTER VI -- 9 Further Perspectives -- 9.1 A quantitative look at LASC -- 9.2 General Conclusions -- 9.3 Limitations of the Model -- Primary Sources -- Works Cited -- Index.