manipulating meaning worksheet and writing a burlesque

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Manipulating Meaning Worksheet

Part A: Twain’s Family Tree

Use all the skills you have learned throughout this course to complete a close reading of the description you’ve chosen. Use context clues to make sense of things that are not clear at first. Pay attention to Twain’s tone and the humor devices he uses.

Augustus Twain, seems to have made something of a stir about the year 1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old sabre and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night, and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.

  1. Which of Twain’s ancestors did you select?(Augustus Twain)
  2. What is the ACTUAL story of that man’s life? Provide supporting evidence from the text.
  3. What techniques does Twain use to create satire in the description you selected? Provide supporting evidence from the text.

Part B: Create Your Own Satire

For this part of the assignment, you will appropriate Twain’s technique and write a burlesque of an event in your life or in the life of a celebrity. Remember, a burlesque plays on contradiction between a subject and the way it is treated. Twain used humor to describe serious, sometimes awful, events, but you can turn it around and present something fun or happy in a very serious way – the choice is yours.

Requirements:
Incorporate at least two humor devices
Write a minimum of five sentences

Paste your completed burlesque here:

After you have written your burlesque, answer these reflection questions in complete sentences:

  1. Factually describe the event you wrote about in your burlesque.
  2. What humor devices did you incorporate? Why did you choose them?