
Comedy after Postmodernism: Rereading Comedy from Edward Lear to Charles Willeford (Hardback)
Kirby Olson (author)
£34.50
Hardback
184 Pages /
Published: 30/01/2001
- We can order this from the publisher
Is comedy postmodern? Kirby Olson posits that no one has been more marginalized than the comic writer, whose irreverent truths have always made others uncomfortable. In a literary age that purports to champion diversity, comic writers remain an underclass huddling at the fringes of the canon. Olson challenges the status quo by inviting the comic writer into the center of literary debate. In the growing discipline of humor studies, Olson is the first to create a substantial link between the fields of comedy and postmodernism, discovering in comic writers a philosophy of oddness and paradox that parallels and extends the work of the major postmodern thinkers. With elegant clarity, ""Comedy After Post-modernism"" examines: Edward Lear as he invents a comic picturesque to challenge the sublime of Kant and Ruskin Gregory Corso as he explodes the ""Great Chain of Being"" of his early Catholicism; Philippe Soupault as a comic surrealist undoing the sacrificial aesthetics of Andr Breton; P.G. Wodehouse as a social thinker with surprisingly deep affinities to anarchist Peter Kropotkin and radical social theorist Charles Fourier; Stewart Home, the infamously violent punk author, as a pacifist whose narrative questions Marxist-anarchist terrorism in favor of patience and tolerance; and, Charles Willeford, the maestro of the black humor police procedural, as a postmodern philosopher who deepens the problems of ethical and aesthetic judgment after postmodernism. 'An original, splendidly researched, and necessary book. By pointing to the vast excluded literature of comic writers, Dr. Olson opens the door to a postmodern scholarship capable of greater flexibility. ""Comedy After Postmodernism"" evinces a lucid, passionate, and engaging style' - Andrei Codrescu. 'There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the utmost disorder; He danced with the cat, and made tea in his hat, Which vexed all the folks on the Border' - From ""The Complete Nonsense"" of Edward Lear.
Publisher: Texas Tech Press,U.S.
ISBN: 9780896724402
Number of pages: 184
Weight: 454 g
Dimensions: 235 x 159 x 19 mm
You may also be interested in...
Please sign in to write a review
Sign In / Register
Not registered? CREATE AN ACCOUNTCREATE A plus ACCOUNT
Sign In
Download the Waterstones App
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?
Click & Collect
Reserve online, pay on collection
Alternatively, for multiple items you may find it easier to add to basket, then pay online and collect in as little as 2 hours, subject to availability.
Alternatively, for multiple items you may find it easier to add to basket, then pay online and collect in as little as 2 hours, subject to availability.
Thank you for your reservation
Your order is now being processed and we have sent a confirmation email to you at
When will my order be ready to collect?
Following the initial email, you will be contacted by the shop to confirm that your item is available for collection.
Call us on or send us an email at
Unfortunately there has been a problem with your order
Please try again or alternatively you can contact your chosen shop on or send us an email at