Humor and Political Awareness of the Public in Constitutional Era

Along with the developments leading to Constitutional Era, other social developments were emerging, which played a significant role in public awareness and liberation. This process which significantly formed in the area of critical literature in the form of humor and in the realm of press and literature, provided for the enlightenment of graduates` thoughts, intellectuals, carriers and agents of change, and in the final analysis, the general public. With regard to this and considering the profound impact of critical literature, especially humor, in expressing social reality in the language of humor, in this article we attempt to answer the following question: What was the effect of critical literature, especially humor, on the awareness of the public and the ruling elites regarding Iranian backwardness and the formation of Constitutional Revolution? Our hypothesis in the present study is that critical literature, especially in Constitutional Era, with its metaphorical and aesthetic features as well as its elegance has managed to deal with the deepest and most serious problems of the society, and has had a significant impact on public awareness.
As regards method, this is a descriptive – analytical research in which we used some Quentin – Skinner`s interpretive tools titled as “Illocutionary Hermeneutics” based on which the researcher tries to find out the intention of the author or writer of humor from what has been said.