A Discussion of 'Shaggy Dog' Stories
I was assigned into a group of three and had discussed the literary genre, the 'Shaggy Dog' stories, a joke that starts with a long winded story, roughly a paragraph long, ending with a punchline about the length of a sentence.
From the discussions I had with my other group members and the professor, all agreed that Shaggy Dog stories usually have the following elements:
- A long winded plot
- Intentionally chosen plot elements (word choice, situation,)
- Double entendres
- Use of puns
- Ridiculous or unlikely scenarios
- Shared meaning
We discussed and came to agree that for a Shaggy Dog story to 'work', those elements had to be used effectively, and that for the joke's punchline to work, the reader and writer should be in agreement with the meaning of the story and the story's elements. For example, in order to get lawyer jokes, as discussed in one of the stories, the reader had to have already had prior knowledge of the popular perception of lawyers and/or disdain for the legal profession.
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