French laughter : literary humour from Diderot to Tournier / Walter Redfern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Redfern, W. D.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French literature--History and criticism.

French literature.

Humor in literature.

Laughter in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 p.)

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The culmination of a lifetime's fascination with humour, Walter Redfern's book treats major French writers from the 18th to the 20th centuries as humorists, including Diderot, Rousseau, Sade, Huysmans, Flaubert, Beckett, and Tournier. He considers irony, hyperbole, wordplay, jokes, dialogue, humour as philosophical speculation, and plagiarism. - ;The culmination of a lifetime's fascination with humour in all its forms, this book is the first in any language to embrace such an impressive span of authors and such a broad range of topics in French literary humour. In nine wide-ranging chapters W

Contents:

Contents; Abbreviations; Promises, Promises; 1. The Laughing Philosopher: Diderot; Riff on Laughter; 2. The Question of Humourlessness (Rousseau, Sade, God, and Brisset); Riff on Dreams; 3. Huysmans: Back-to-Front, and Backpacking; 4. A Little Bird Tells Us: Parrots in Flaubert, Queneau, Beckett (and Tutti Quanti); 5. Blague Hard! Vallès; Riff on Black Humour; 6. Upping the Anti/e: Exaggeration in Céline and Vallès; Riff on Politics; 7. Drôle de philosophie: Sartre; 8. Bad Jokes and Beckett; Riff on Taste; 9. Approximating Man: Michel Tournier's Play with Language; Inconclusion; Notes

BibliographyIndex; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; Q; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y; Z

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-240) and index.

ISBN:

9780191696749

0-19-152870-6

9786611341657

1-281-34165-7

OCLC:

243580462