Comparative Criticism: Volume 10, Comedy, Irony, Parody (Comparative Criticism, Series Number 10)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 11/9/1989
EAN 9780521390149, ISBN10: 0521390141

Hardcover, 439 pages, 23.7 x 16 x 2.8 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

Volume 10, dedicated to 'Comedy, Irony, Parody', celebrates the first decade of Comparative Criticism in a light-hearted vein. Michael Silk opens with a wide-ranging essay asserting the primacy of comedy and declaring its independence of tragedy. T. L. S. Sprigge explores philosophers who dared to write on laughter: Schopenhauer and Bergson. Bernard Harrison looks at the twentieth century's favourite comic novel, Tristram Shandy, in the light of Locke's views on 'the particular'. Peter Brand pursues the theatrical arts of disguises, masking, and gender-swapping through Renaissance Europe, from Ariosto to Shakespeare. Jane H. M. Taylor traces the danse macabre in modern 'black humour'. Christine Brooke-Rose, distinguished novelist and critic, reads from and comments on her own witty fictions. Michael Wood describes how Lolita outwitted her seducer.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Frontispiece
Editor's introduction
Part I. Comedy, Irony, Parody
1. The autonomy of comedy Michael Silk
2. Schopenhauer and Bergson on laughter T. L. S. Sprigge
3. Disguise in Renaissance comedy, with illustrations Peter Brand
4. The defence of Wit
Sterne, Locke and the particular Bernard Harrison
5. Ill wit and good humour
women's comedy and the canon Christine Brooke-Rose
6. The danse macabre
reflections on black humour, with illustrations Jane H. M. Taylor
7. Lolita in Wonderland Michael Wood
Part II. Translations
8. 'A history of 500 vanessas' and other poems from Lepidoptera Guido Gazzano
9. Readiness, ripeness
Hamlet, Lear Yves Bonnefoy
Part III. Essay Reviews Stephen Bann, Clive Scott, Michael Lynn George, Douwe Fokkema
Arthur Terry.