Race riots : comedy and ethnicity in modern British fiction / Michael L. Ross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ross, Michael L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Racism in literature.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in literature.

Comic, The, in literature.

Laughter in literature.

English fiction--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (323 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ross examines racial humour as a manifestation of post-colonialism and questions contemporary critiques of "political correctness." Looking at cartoons from pre-World War II issues of Punch, Ross shows how disdain for non-Europeans plays a key role in period British humour and links this idea to the racial humour in the work of Evelyn Waugh and Joyce Cary. He also demonstrates how these assumptions are later turned on their heads by writers such as Salman Rushdie.

Contents:

Caliban and his progeny

Inferiority complexions: the London charivari

White mischief: Evelyn Waugh's African charivari

Joyce Cary's tragic African clown

Forster's funny bridge party: nation and humour in A passage to India

Roman Catholic carnival: Muriel Spark's passage to Jerusalem

The far and the near: Pym and Taylor

Samuel Selvon and the carnival of reverse colonization

Rerouting the comic: Salman Rushdie's The satanic verses

"A funny kind of Englishman": Hanif Kureishi's carnival of ethnicities

"Some subtleties of the isle": Matthew Kneale's anti-Tempest

The empire laughs last.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [291]-302) and index.

ISBN:

9786612850103

9780773578135

0773578137

9781282850101

1282850105

9780773560130

0773560130

OCLC:

311307988