Edition |
1st ed. |
Description |
154 p. ; 22 cm. |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [145]-150) and index. |
Contents |
Introduction: Modernism and Dark Humor -- Comic Theory, the Social Novel, and Freud -- Criticizing the Social System: Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's Dark Comedy of Manners -- The Dark Domestic Vision of Ivy Compton-Burnett: A House and Its Head -- The Too, Too Bogus World: Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies -- Astolpho Meets Sisyphus: Melancholy and Repetition in Anthony Powell's Afternoon Men. |
Summary |
"Social satire in the modern period is traditionally seen as a conservative genre in opposition to the experimental aesthetic of literary modernism. In Dark Humor and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel, Lisa Colletta challenges this prevailing view, arguing that the darkly humorous social satires of the interwar years in Britain display a deep ambivalence and a delight in disorder that denies the reader the comfort of a stable or totalizing critique. Combining analysis of canonical writers and those often overlooked - Virginia Woolf, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Evelyn Waugh, and Anthony Powell - Colletta draws on psychoanalytic theories of joke-work and gallows humor to make the claim that dark humor is a defining characteristic of Modernism. She deftly connects these writers through their humor and offers an innovative rereading of Modernist texts."--BOOK JACKET. |
Subject |
English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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Humorous stories, English -- History and criticism.
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Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
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Social satire, English -- History and criticism.
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Modernism (Literature) -- Great Britain.
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Social problems in literature.
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Black humor.
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ISBN |
1403963657 |
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9781403963659 |
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