Dark Humor

Also known as black humor or black comedy, dark humor is a form of satire that most often is disturbing, shocking, offensive, and morbid.  Generally adopting a cynical, ironic, and skeptical perspective, dark humor focuses attention on difficult, often ignored or disregarded anxiety-inducing subjects, such as death, suffering, cruelty, corruption, war, and human frailty.  Its purpose is to make light of such serious and often taboo subjects, using humor as a means to reduce terror, fear, and distress.  Grimly humorous, dark humor makes use of a low-key, matter-of-fact tone when dealing (often graphically) with highly emotional subjects, events, and situations.

The French Modernist Andre Breton coined the term when he published Anthology of Black Humor (1940) and credited Jonathan Swift as one of the early originators.  Before Breton, a previous term, gallows humor, was often used to describe dark humor.

Among writers known for dark humor are Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Edward Albee, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Philip Roth.  Contemporary comediennes who rely on dark humor for much of their comedy are Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Monty Python, Rodney Dangerfield, Lewis Black, Dave Chappelle, and Chris Rock.

Metafiction

Metafiction is a type, style, or genre of fiction writing that reflects on the nature and status of fiction and often seeks to test fictional boundaries.  Metafiction self-consciously draws attention to its own fictional techniques and thus examines the relationship between fiction and reality.  Metafictional writers often break the standard expectations of fiction as a genre, often inserting themselves into their texts.