Comedy levelOpen →
Is comedy the main motor, a sustained line, or punctual bursts.
In this page ~4 min
Overview
A small vocabulary, reused everywhere
The toolbox is not a theory. It is a stable set of labels that makes guides readable and comparable.
It answers three practical questions: how central comedy is in the book, where the book plays, and which clusters it belongs to.
EnvironmentOpen →
Where it plays: settings and institutions that shape scenes.
LabsOpen →
Optional hubs connecting works that share a specific charge.
Important: “Comedy level” is not the same thing as a current.
Currents are the big map. Comedy level tells you how much comedy drives the text.
Comedy level
Comic Engine, Comic Thread, Comic Turn
Three labels that describe how central comedy is in a novel.
They stay rough by design. They help orientation. They do not replace reading.
Novel label
Comic Engine
Comedy is the main narrative engine. It shapes the voice, the rhythm and the logic of scenes.
Typical: Wilt.
Many classic farces and institution comedies sit here.
Novel label
Comic Thread
The novel develops a sustained comic thread that coexists with other registers. Comedy articulates the whole but does not alone determine the form.
Example: White Noise as a hybrid case.
Novel label
Comic Turn
Comedy appears as striking incursions. These local moments structure the reading, without occupying the entire text.
Useful for novels with sharp comic scenes inside a broader tone.
Practical reading cue: ask one question.
If you remove comedy, does the book collapse (Engine), keep a backbone (Thread), or keep its plot but lose sparks (Turn).
Author profiles
Core Comedy, Hybrid, Comic Incursions
Author profiles use a parallel trio, at the scale of a whole body of work.
This is not a ranking. It describes how consistently comedy functions as an organising force across books.
Author label
Core Comedy
Comedy is the centre of the work. Several books develop comic forms and contexts, with variations in mechanics.
Author label
Hybrid / Transversal
The author works across several registers while keeping a significant comic core in part of their books or as a background tone.
Author label
Comic Incursions
The author intervenes in comedy punctually. Some novels or passages have a strong comic importance within a broader output.
Consistency rule: a novel can be Comic Engine while its author remains Hybrid,
if comedy is central in only part of the bibliography.
Environment
Where it plays
Environment names the scene terrain: place, milieu, period, and the institutions that shape behaviour.
Keep it concrete. Prefer one strong institution to a pile of descriptors.
Labs
Optional hubs for navigation
Labs are optional. They connect books by shared energy, not by period or nationality.
A Lab should feel useful as a path: it helps you move from one guide to another with a clear reason.
What a Lab doesRule
- connect at least three works
- name a shared comic tension
- stay readable in one line
ReferenceOpen →
French source page for labs and their definitions as they evolve.
Usage
How to use the toolbox in guides
Keep it minimal. Repeat it consistently. Let the text do the nuanced work.
One label per axis
Use one comedy level label, one environment line, then labs if useful.
Nouns over stacks
Prefer an institution noun to chains of qualifiers. It reads faster and travels better.
Stable links
Use stable anchors for terms and sections. These anchors are meant to be cited.
Next step: once toolbox.html is live, each current page can link here and reuse the same labels,
without re-explaining them.