A Cheerful Nihilism

A Cheerful Nihilism PDF Author: Richard Boyd Hauck
Publisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"The awareness that the absurd view is both progressive an destructive, serious and hilarious,yet the only possible view, permeated American humor," writes Richard Hauck in the opening chapter of this engrossing study of American humorous fiction. The American absurdist, he finds, takes the exploration of meaninglessness as "a grim and hilarious game"; philosophically a nihilist, he is nonetheless "cheerful" in his persistence in creating comedy in the face of an unresponsive universe. Mr. Hauck begins his survey with Benjamin Franklin, whose writings he regards as "the first well-known" and fully expressed American humor of the absurd," and proceeds to a telling examinationof the grim "tall tales" of the western frontier. Against this background he explores in detail the work of Melville and Twain, Faulkner and John Barth.

A Cheerful Nihilism

A Cheerful Nihilism PDF Author: Richard Boyd Hauck
Publisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The awareness that the absurd view is both progressive an destructive, serious and hilarious,yet the only possible view, permeated American humor," writes Richard Hauck in the opening chapter of this engrossing study of American humorous fiction. The American absurdist, he finds, takes the exploration of meaninglessness as "a grim and hilarious game"; philosophically a nihilist, he is nonetheless "cheerful" in his persistence in creating comedy in the face of an unresponsive universe. Mr. Hauck begins his survey with Benjamin Franklin, whose writings he regards as "the first well-known" and fully expressed American humor of the absurd," and proceeds to a telling examinationof the grim "tall tales" of the western frontier. Against this background he explores in detail the work of Melville and Twain, Faulkner and John Barth.

The Sunny Nihilist

The Sunny Nihilist PDF Author: Wendy Syfret
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781788167031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description


Echoland

Echoland PDF Author: Gerald Ernest Paul Gillespie
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9789052010304
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This book follows several major European literary «echoes» still reverberating since the mysterious emergence of such archetypal figures as Faust, Hamlet, Quixote, and Don Juan alongside lingering ancient and medieval protagonists in the Renaissance. Four centuries of attempts to redefine «modern» identity are traced against the evolution of a new genre of totalizing encyclopaedic literature, the «humoristic» tradition which re-weaves the positive and negative strands of the European, and today also New World, «grand narrative.» The book's method, inspired by Joyce, is to «listen» to recurrent motifs in the cultural flow from Humanism to Postmodernism for clues to an identity transcending the personal.

Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts

Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts PDF Author: Albert E. Stone
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812211276
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Stone rescues autobiography from the thickets of recent critical theory, in which the life portrayed has often seemed less important than the inventive literary techniques. He argues that the techniques are important because knowledge of the life is important to our culture. Restricting himself primarily to 16 writers of the 20th century, Stone juxtaposes two or three figures in given chapters, such as "Becoming a Woman in Male America: Margaret Mead and Anais Nin" and "Two Recreate One: The Act of Collaboration in Recent Black Autobiography -- Ossie Guffy, Nate Shaw, Malcolm X." Other writers considered are W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Adams, Black Elk, Thomas Merton, Louis Sullivan, Richard Wright, Norman Mailer, Frank Conroy, and Lillian Hellman.

Redressing the balance

Redressing the balance PDF Author: Zita Dresner
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617034688
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Gathers humorous stories, poetry, and essays by American writers from Anne Bradstreet to Erma Bombeck and Erica Jong.

Narrative Turns and Minor Genres in Postmodernism

Narrative Turns and Minor Genres in Postmodernism PDF Author: Theo D'haen
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789051838503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television

Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television PDF Author: Silas Kaine Ezell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317119401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This book examines contemporary American animated humor, focusing on popular animated television shows in order to explore the ways in which they engage with American culture and history, employing a peculiarly American way of using humor to discuss important cultural issues. With attention to the work of American humorists, such as the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, and Kurt Vonnegut, and the question of the extent to which modern animated satire shares the qualities of earlier humor, particularly the use of setting, the carnivalesque, collective memory, racial humor, and irony, Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television concentrates on a particular strand of American humor: the use of satire to expose the gap between the American ideal and the American experience. Taking up the notion of ’The Great American Joke’, the author examines the discursive humor of programmes such as The Simpsons, South Park , Family Guy , King of the Hill, Daria, American Dad!, The Boondocks, The PJs and Futurama . A study of how animated television programmes offer a new discourse on a very traditional strain of American humor, this book will appeal to scholars and students of popular culture, television and media studies, American literature and visual studies, and contemporary humor and satire.

The Sun Shines for All

The Sun Shines for All PDF Author: Janet E. Steele
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815625797
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Through a blend of social and media history, the author explores America's transition from a production-oriented society to a culture of consumption. Because of Dana's strong aversion to the consumerism that accompanied industrial capitalism, the Sun became both the conscience and the advocate for New York's working class. In the words of Joseph Pulitzer, Dana transformed the Sun into "the most piquant, entertaining, and without exception, the best newspaper in the world."

Cavorting on the Devil's Fork

Cavorting on the Devil's Fork PDF Author: C. F. M. Noland
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 9781557288349
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The rural folk humor written by Arkansas writer C. F. M. Noland beginning in 1837 is brought together in a collection of semiautobiographical letters that tell tall tales in dialect, reflecting the peculiar characteristics of the people of a backwoods region. Original.

Representations of British Emigration, Colonisation and Settlement

Representations of British Emigration, Colonisation and Settlement PDF Author: Robert D. Grant
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230510310
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This volume explores the complex relationships between early Nineteenth-Century representations of emigration, colonization and settlement, and the social, economic and cultural conditions within which they were produced. It stresses the role of writers, illustrators and artists in 'making' colonial/settler landscapes within the metropolitan imaginary, paying particularly close attention to the complex interdependencies between metropolis and colony, which have too often been reduced to simplistic binaries of centre and periphery, metropolitan core and colonial outpost. Focusing on material dealing with Canada, the Cape, Australia and New Zealand, its interdisciplinarity and global reach consequently adds considerably to the field of colonial studies.