Comic timing in prose fiction

Abstract This article explores the perception of comic timing effects in prose fiction and the involvement of this effect in a reader’s ability to recognise and appreciate humour. It suggests that the effect of comic timing, generally, results from perceived changes in pace rather than absolute timing. In a written text, a comic timing effect can be constructed linguistically through changes in perceived narrative urgency. In the passages analysed here, this change is from a state of impeded urgency, where textual features that encourage a sense of pace are combined with features that diminish this, to a state where the impediment to urgency is removed. This corresponds with and contributes to the reader’s sense of emergence from the text world, a positional shift that encourages their sense of sharing humour with the author.