Comedy After Postmodernism: Rereading Comedy from Edward Lear to Charles WillefordIs comedy postmodern? Kirby Olson posits that no one has been more marginalized than the comic writer, whose irreverent truths have always made others uncomfortable. In a literary age that purports to champion diversity, comic writers remain an underclass huddling at the fringes of the canon. Olson challenges the status quo by inviting the comic writer into the center of literary debate. In the growing discipline of humor studies, Olson is the first to create a substantial link between the fields of comedy and postmodernism, discovering in comic writers a philosophy of oddness and paradox that parallels and extends the work of the major postmodern thinkers. With elegant clarity, Comedy After Post-modernism examines: Edward Lear as he invents a comic picturesque to challenge the sublime of Kant and Ruskin Gregory Corso as he explodes the Great Chain of Being of his early Catholicism Philippe Soupault as a comic surrealist undoing the sacrificial aesthetics of André Breton P.G. Wodehouse as a social thinker with surprisingly deep affinities to anarchist Peter Kropotkin and radical social theorist Charles Fourier Stewart Home, the infamously violent punk author, as a pacifist whose narrative questions Marxist-anarchist terrorism in favor of patience and tolerance Charles Willeford, the maestro of the black humor police procedural, as a postmodern philosopher who deepens the problems of ethical and aesthetic judgment after postmodernism. "An original, splendidly researched, and necessary book. By pointing to the vast excluded literature of 'comic writers, ' Dr. Olson opens the door to a postmodern scholarship capable of greater flexibility. Comedy After Postmodernism evinces a lucid, passionate, and engaging style." --Andrei Codrescu There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the utmost disorder; He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat, Which vexed all the folks on the Border. --From The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear |
Contents
Edward Lear Deleuzian Landscape Painter | 21 |
Gregory Corso Doubting Thomist | 41 |
Comic Fiction Writers and the Problem of the Just | 72 |
Philippe Soupault and the Comedy of the Parisian Derive | 73 |
Bertie and Jeeves at the End of History P G Wodehouse as Political Scientist | 89 |
The War on the Home Front Comedy and Political Identity in the Work of Stewart Home | 109 |
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aesthetic American anarchist André Breton animals argues Aristotle art critic artists beauty Bertie and Jeeves Bertie's Bingo Burnt Orange Heresy chapter characters Charles Willeford classical liberal comedy comic picturesque comic writers Corps Perdu criteria Critique of Judgment cultural Darwin Debierue's dérive describes deterritorialization Edward Lear ethical feeling fiction Figueras's Fourier Françoise Gilles Deleuze Gorgias Gregory Corso Hegel Herron Home's human humor ideals identity politics Indian interest irreverence James Figueras Jean-François Lyotard Jeeves Jeeves's judge justice Kant Knight and Knight Kropotkin landscape laugh laughter live Lyotard and Deleuze Marx Marxist master Mémoires de l'Oubli metanarrative moral Nadja narrative narrator nature never Nietzsche notion P. G. Wodehouse Philippe Soupault philosophers poem poet poetry postmodern Price questions sense Snyder social society Sophists Soupault's novel species Stewart Home sublime surrealist thing thinkers thought tion tragedy tragic transcendent truth values wants Wodehouse's women World of Jeeves