Framing literary humour : cells, masks and bodies as 20th-century sites of imprisonment / Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mathieu-Lessard, Jeanne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism.

Literature, Modern.

Wit and humor--History and criticism.

Wit and humor.

Humor in literature.

Imprisonment in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 volume ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Summary:

"Contrary to their oppressive design, might structures of imprisonment actually incite humour, itself a form of liberation? Starting from the most obvious cases of imprisonment (war camps, prison cells) and moving to the less obvious (masks, bodies), Containing Humour demonstrates how 20th-century humour in theory and in fiction cannot be fully understood without a careful look at its connection with the notion of imprisonment. Understanding imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard analyzes selected works of Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello to reconfigure confinement as an essential structural condition for the emergence of humour"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Humour and imprisonment

Humour in the cell: prison cells and war camps

Social entrapment: humoristic characters vs. the world

Humour in the cells: configurations of the body as prison

Conclusion: a geometry of humour

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Mathieu-Lessard, Jeanne, Framing literary humour

ISBN:

9781501356551

1501356550

OCLC:

1107057706