Research Catalog

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

Title
French laughter : literary humour from Diderot to Tournier / Walter Redfern.
Author
Redfern, W. D.
Publication
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextRequest in advance PQ145.1.L3 R43 2008Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description
ix, 245 p.; 23 cm.
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.
Subject
  • French literature > History and criticism
  • Humor in literature
  • Laughter in literature
Genre/Form
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-240) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
The laughing philosopher: Diderot ; Riff on laughter -- The question of humourlessness (Rousseau, Sade, God, and Brisset) ; Riff on dreams -- Huysmans: back-to-front, and backpacking -- A little bird tells us: Parrots in Flaubert, Queneau, Beckett (and Tutti Quanti) -- Blague hard! Valles ; Riff on black humour -- Upping the anti/e: exaggeration in Celine and Valles ; Riff on politics -- Drole de philosophie: Sartre -- Bad Jokes and Beckett ; Riff on taste -- Approximating Man: Michel Tournier's play with language.
ISBN
  • 9780199237579 (hbk.)
  • 0199237573 (hbk.)
LCCN
^^2008295353
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library