black humour

Humour based on the grotesque, morbid, or macabre. It is often an element of satire. A classic example is Irish writer Jonathan Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729), in which he argues that eating Irish children would help to alleviate Ireland's poverty. 20th-century examples can be found in the works of Samuel Beckett, the routines of the US comic Lenny Bruce, the work of US film-maker Quentin Tarantino, and the drawings of the English caricaturist Gerald Scarfe. It is also an important element of Theatre of the Absurd.