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Laughter, Literature, Violence, 1840–1930

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  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Jonathan Taylor

    1. School of Arts, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

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  • Examines the hybrid nature of humour and comedy in works by Edgar Allan Poe, Gosse, Wyndham Lewis, and Katherine Mansfield

  • Explores the complex nature between laughter and violence

  • Views comedy in relation to other literary modes, forms, genres, sub-genres and generic traits

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. First and Last Laughs: Allegories, Hybrids and Histories, 1840–1930

    • Jonathan Taylor
    Pages 1-48

  3. His ‘Last Jest’: On Laughter, Edgar Allan Poe and ‘Hop-Frog’

    • Jonathan Taylor
    Pages 49-88

  4. ‘Unseemly Levity’: On Memoirs, Humour and Edmund Gosse

    • Jonathan Taylor
    Pages 89-160

  5. ‘Perfect Laughter’: On War, Wyndham Lewis and The Wild Body

    • Jonathan Taylor
    Pages 161-217

  6. ‘Derisive Laughter’: On Superiority, Katherine Mansfield and ‘Miss Brill’

    • Jonathan Taylor
    Pages 219-234

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 235-258
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Keywords

About this book

Laughter, Literature, Violence, 1840-1930 investigates the strange, complex, even paradoxical relationship between laughter, on the one hand, and violence, war, horror, death, on the other. It does so in relation to philosophy, politics, and key nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary texts, by Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Gosse, Wyndham Lewis and Katherine Mansfield – texts which explore the far reaches of Schadenfreude, and so-called ‘superiority theories’ of laughter, pushing these theories to breaking point. In these literary texts, the violent superiority often ascribed to laughter is seen as radically unstable, co-existing with its opposite: an anarchic sense of equality. Laughter, humour and comedy are slippery, duplicitous, ambivalent, self-contradictory hybrids, fusing apparently discordant elements. Now and then, though, literary and philosophical texts also dream of a different kind of laughter, one which reaches beyond its alloys – a transcendent, ‘perfect’ laughter which exists only in and for itself.  

Reviews

“In Laughter, Literature, Violence, 1840-1930 we see the convoluted relationship between laughter, violence, war, horror and death. … This is a text for the academic to help him or her to interrogate and to investigate and a book for the interested party, who enjoys the subject. Both are well served. It is not too academic to put off the casual reader, yet it has enough gravitas to educate and intrigue.” (Jon Wilkins, Everybody's Reviewing, Everybody's Reviewing, everybodysreviewing.blogspot.com, March 23, 2019)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Arts, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Jonathan Taylor

About the author

Jonathan Taylor is Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, where he directs the MA in Creative Writing. He is an author, editor and lecturer, whose writing encompasses both critical and creative forms. His previous monographs are Mastery and Slavery in Victorian Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and Science and Omniscience in Nineteenth-Century Literature (2007). His creative work includes a memoir, Take Me Home (2007), the novel Melissa (2015), and the poetry collection Cassandra Complex (2018). 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Laughter, Literature, Violence, 1840–1930

  • Authors: Jonathan Taylor

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11413-8

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-11412-1Published: 22 February 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-11413-8Published: 04 February 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 258

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature

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