Katharine Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252534
- eISBN:
- 9780191719226
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252534.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication ...
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The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.Less
The works of John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Thomas Lodge effectively established prose fiction in print at the end of the sixteenth century. In these extraordinary pamphlets, rhetorical sophistication is married with the outlandish adventures of young lovers, ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture combined. Fictions of Authorship re-examines these narratives in the light of their creators' developing understanding of the implications of authorship. Christened the ‘University Wits’ by an earlier generation of critics, Lyly, Greene, and Lodge were themselves displaced persons, attempting to shape careers in the new and often despised medium of print. Their attempts to demonstrate their learning while appealing to as wide a readership as possible led them to manufacture multiple authorial personae, and to reflect critically and sometimes outrageously on the works of their contemporaries and predecessors. Their texts are closely interwoven with each other. The authors competed to set new literary trends, often by overgoing the attempts of their peers. Apparently opposed literary modes were mixed, resulting in the placement of a persona like Lyly's Euphues in Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Meanwhile the relationship between writer and reader became increasingly complex, as the authors began to tailor their fictions to an ever expanding market. By providing close and comparative readings of these short fictions, Fictions of Authorship charts the authors' increasing disillusionment with the confines of romance, but also their popular success. As they assimilated and domesticated the experiments of writers like Harvey, Sidney and Spenser, they created an irreverent alternative canon of ‘English literature'.
Anna Chahoud
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199558681
- eISBN:
- 9780191720888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558681.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter examines how Cicero shaped his oratorical persona through the deployment of precise verbal devices (especially diminutives and irony), re-configuring his champions of the past by ...
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This chapter examines how Cicero shaped his oratorical persona through the deployment of precise verbal devices (especially diminutives and irony), re-configuring his champions of the past by combining different aspects of their humour so as to construct a unified model of verbal wit that owes much to the tradition of satire at Rome, particularly to the voice of Lucilius. The orator could not adopt wholesale the conventions or persona of the satirist, however. Cicero's self-construction modulates political invective in accordance with the dignitas and auctoritas appropriate to the orator, and with the elegantia and wit of the urbane contemporary Roman.Less
This chapter examines how Cicero shaped his oratorical persona through the deployment of precise verbal devices (especially diminutives and irony), re-configuring his champions of the past by combining different aspects of their humour so as to construct a unified model of verbal wit that owes much to the tradition of satire at Rome, particularly to the voice of Lucilius. The orator could not adopt wholesale the conventions or persona of the satirist, however. Cicero's self-construction modulates political invective in accordance with the dignitas and auctoritas appropriate to the orator, and with the elegantia and wit of the urbane contemporary Roman.
Floyd Grave and Margaret Grave
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195173574
- eISBN:
- 9780199872152
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195173574.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Encompassing sixty-eight works composed over a span of more than four decades, Haydn's quartet oeuvre contributed to the establishment, solidification, and refinement of late 18th-century ...
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Encompassing sixty-eight works composed over a span of more than four decades, Haydn's quartet oeuvre contributed to the establishment, solidification, and refinement of late 18th-century chamber-music practices, notably by furnishing superlative models of idiomatic ensemble technique (involving textural diversity and continuous change in relationship among the instruments), style (highlighting the play of formal conventions and musical customs associated with folk music, popular dance, opera, concerto, and other genres), and compositional process (featuring motivic elaboration, harmonic novelty, and narrative intrigue). Conventions Haydn adapted for quartet use include those of sonata form, the minuet-trio complex, variation, rondo, and fugue. In addition, he established norms of his own for the sequence of movements in a quartet and for the design of the opus groups, each of which encompasses a particular constellation of variety and consistency in form, style, and ensemble technique. Examination of the opus groups reveals insights into the circumstances under which they were written, the musical resources on which they drew, their innovations, their points of connection with other opus groups, their manifestations of both change and continuity in outlook and style, and their reflections of Haydn's artistic personality — in particular his penchant for novelty in sonority, theme, metrical play, phraseology, and large-scale structure; his gift for musical irony in drawing connections between seemingly unrelated ideas; and his irrepressible musical wit and humor, typically involving strokes of surprise, thwarted expectation, and the whimsical juxtaposition of incongruous elements.Less
Encompassing sixty-eight works composed over a span of more than four decades, Haydn's quartet oeuvre contributed to the establishment, solidification, and refinement of late 18th-century chamber-music practices, notably by furnishing superlative models of idiomatic ensemble technique (involving textural diversity and continuous change in relationship among the instruments), style (highlighting the play of formal conventions and musical customs associated with folk music, popular dance, opera, concerto, and other genres), and compositional process (featuring motivic elaboration, harmonic novelty, and narrative intrigue). Conventions Haydn adapted for quartet use include those of sonata form, the minuet-trio complex, variation, rondo, and fugue. In addition, he established norms of his own for the sequence of movements in a quartet and for the design of the opus groups, each of which encompasses a particular constellation of variety and consistency in form, style, and ensemble technique. Examination of the opus groups reveals insights into the circumstances under which they were written, the musical resources on which they drew, their innovations, their points of connection with other opus groups, their manifestations of both change and continuity in outlook and style, and their reflections of Haydn's artistic personality — in particular his penchant for novelty in sonority, theme, metrical play, phraseology, and large-scale structure; his gift for musical irony in drawing connections between seemingly unrelated ideas; and his irrepressible musical wit and humor, typically involving strokes of surprise, thwarted expectation, and the whimsical juxtaposition of incongruous elements.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social ...
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This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social context for the early Marvell that can account for both the origins and audience of the lyric verse and the early political poems. This introduction surveys critical representations of Marvell as a solitary and private poet and juxtaposes these with evidence of his friendships with other poets after he had returned to England in 1646/7 from his travels on the continent. It also emphasizes the social function of poetry and its relationship with patronage for a man of Marvell's background and education in the 17th century.Less
This introductory chapter emphasizes how Andrew Marvell the lyric poet has been divided in scholarship from Andrew Marvell the political poet. One of the goals of the book is to recover a social context for the early Marvell that can account for both the origins and audience of the lyric verse and the early political poems. This introduction surveys critical representations of Marvell as a solitary and private poet and juxtaposes these with evidence of his friendships with other poets after he had returned to England in 1646/7 from his travels on the continent. It also emphasizes the social function of poetry and its relationship with patronage for a man of Marvell's background and education in the 17th century.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a ...
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This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a Parliamentarian propagandist and shows how he followed Milton in seeking to convince his literary friends to support a royalist–Independent alliance against the Presbyterians. The second section reads Marvell's An Elegy Upon the Death of My Lord Francis Villiers as concerned with similar themes of Lovelace's post-war verse––the destruction of court culture and the future for poetry and wit in a Puritan society. The third section is the most extensive interpretation to date of Marvell's verse epistle ‘To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace’, a poem which brings together central themes of the previous chapters and reveals Marvell's allegiance to the cause of wit above the defeated cause of the king.Less
This chapter sets Marvell's two of published occasional poems of 1648–9 in the context of the literary community around Stanley in London. The first section examines John Hall's career as a Parliamentarian propagandist and shows how he followed Milton in seeking to convince his literary friends to support a royalist–Independent alliance against the Presbyterians. The second section reads Marvell's An Elegy Upon the Death of My Lord Francis Villiers as concerned with similar themes of Lovelace's post-war verse––the destruction of court culture and the future for poetry and wit in a Puritan society. The third section is the most extensive interpretation to date of Marvell's verse epistle ‘To His Noble Friend Mr Richard Lovelace’, a poem which brings together central themes of the previous chapters and reveals Marvell's allegiance to the cause of wit above the defeated cause of the king.
Nicholas Mcdowell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199278008
- eISBN:
- 9780191707810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199278008.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Poetry
The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ...
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The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ‘Horatian Ode’. It is argued that the poem is written in the cause of wit, rather than royalism or republicanism, and so appropriate for an audience composed of former members of the Stanley circle. May's betrayal is of the muses; Marvell fears the same charge may be levelled at him. The echoes of the poem in the 1650s verse of Lovelace and Alexander Brome, another ‘Cavalier’ poet involved with the Stanley circle, offer suggestions as to how ‘Tom May's Death’ was read by royalist contemporaries, and how they reacted to Marvell's own pro-Cromwellian verse.Less
The concluding chapter focuses on Marvell's satire ‘Tom May's Death’, the allegiance which has long puzzled scholars given its apparently royalist sentiment but date of composition after the ‘Horatian Ode’. It is argued that the poem is written in the cause of wit, rather than royalism or republicanism, and so appropriate for an audience composed of former members of the Stanley circle. May's betrayal is of the muses; Marvell fears the same charge may be levelled at him. The echoes of the poem in the 1650s verse of Lovelace and Alexander Brome, another ‘Cavalier’ poet involved with the Stanley circle, offer suggestions as to how ‘Tom May's Death’ was read by royalist contemporaries, and how they reacted to Marvell's own pro-Cromwellian verse.
Howard J. Curzer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199693726
- eISBN:
- 9780191738890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693726.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Aristotle’s decision to list wit as a virtue does not reflect an outmoded, aristocratic view that morally good people have panache. What makes someone a witty person is not a good sense of humor, but ...
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Aristotle’s decision to list wit as a virtue does not reflect an outmoded, aristocratic view that morally good people have panache. What makes someone a witty person is not a good sense of humor, but rather it is an appropriate sensitivity to the danger of wounding others through humor. Witty people are not particularly good at specifying which jokes are funny; instead they are good at specify which jokes are hateful in which situations. They avoid telling and tolerating humorous, hurtful put-downs. The passion of wit is not joke-appreciation, but rather it is friendly feeling. Wit’s vices are not (a) boring and (b) clownish dispositions. Instead, they are dispositions (a) to being overly sensitive to the feeling of others with respect to humor, and (b) to being correspondingly insensitive.Less
Aristotle’s decision to list wit as a virtue does not reflect an outmoded, aristocratic view that morally good people have panache. What makes someone a witty person is not a good sense of humor, but rather it is an appropriate sensitivity to the danger of wounding others through humor. Witty people are not particularly good at specifying which jokes are funny; instead they are good at specify which jokes are hateful in which situations. They avoid telling and tolerating humorous, hurtful put-downs. The passion of wit is not joke-appreciation, but rather it is friendly feeling. Wit’s vices are not (a) boring and (b) clownish dispositions. Instead, they are dispositions (a) to being overly sensitive to the feeling of others with respect to humor, and (b) to being correspondingly insensitive.
Robert Ellrodt
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117384
- eISBN:
- 9780191670923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117384.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant ...
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New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant inclinations of his own generation. The poets of the Donne generation rejected the floridness, mellifluousness, and melodiousness of ‘golden’ verse and ‘sugared’ sonnets. The search for manly attitudes and the ‘manly style’, related to a search for truth and meaning, was, indeed, the dominant trend in the Donne generation. It accounts for the change of mood and expression in love poetry. In literary expression a desire of change for the sake of change (a desire paraded in Donne's elegy so entitled) was a prominent feature of this generation. In their cult of wit the poets of the Donne generation were interested in new forms of wit, displayed in the epigram, the paradox, and the rhetorical figures that create surprise and call for a quick apprehension of thought.Less
New attitudes and a new style characterized the poetry of John Donne, who often took the lead in innovation and distinctly expressed his own personality as well as the temper and dominant inclinations of his own generation. The poets of the Donne generation rejected the floridness, mellifluousness, and melodiousness of ‘golden’ verse and ‘sugared’ sonnets. The search for manly attitudes and the ‘manly style’, related to a search for truth and meaning, was, indeed, the dominant trend in the Donne generation. It accounts for the change of mood and expression in love poetry. In literary expression a desire of change for the sake of change (a desire paraded in Donne's elegy so entitled) was a prominent feature of this generation. In their cult of wit the poets of the Donne generation were interested in new forms of wit, displayed in the epigram, the paradox, and the rhetorical figures that create surprise and call for a quick apprehension of thought.
R. W. Maslen
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119913
- eISBN:
- 9780191671241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119913.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Euphues: The Anatomy of Withas a volatile character, signaled by the picture Euphues draws in his final letters of a desperate Emperor trying to hold together a disintegrating ...
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Euphues: The Anatomy of Withas a volatile character, signaled by the picture Euphues draws in his final letters of a desperate Emperor trying to hold together a disintegrating court. If the Anatomy of Wit is Lyly's satire on the private lives of the ruling classes, implying that all the abuses which Ascham ascribed to Italian fiction are no more than accurate representations of the depravities that infest the upper echelons of European society, Euphues and his England (1580) contains his sometimes ironic version of the ideal public weal, an English Utopia, protected from foreign infiltration by a wealth of ‘safe’ native fictions, and described in a text which is capable of absorbing the sophistication of Italian forms of narrative without being destabilized by their ideological contents. If the Anatomy is destructive, then Euphues and his England is ebulliently constructive.Less
Euphues: The Anatomy of Withas a volatile character, signaled by the picture Euphues draws in his final letters of a desperate Emperor trying to hold together a disintegrating court. If the Anatomy of Wit is Lyly's satire on the private lives of the ruling classes, implying that all the abuses which Ascham ascribed to Italian fiction are no more than accurate representations of the depravities that infest the upper echelons of European society, Euphues and his England (1580) contains his sometimes ironic version of the ideal public weal, an English Utopia, protected from foreign infiltration by a wealth of ‘safe’ native fictions, and described in a text which is capable of absorbing the sophistication of Italian forms of narrative without being destabilized by their ideological contents. If the Anatomy is destructive, then Euphues and his England is ebulliently constructive.
Maximillian E. Novak
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199261543
- eISBN:
- 9780191698743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199261543.003.0019
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
On February 15, 1700, Daniel Defoe celebrated the coming of the new century by publishing a poem, The Pacificator, on the state of wit and poetry in England. The poem is actually about the politics ...
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On February 15, 1700, Daniel Defoe celebrated the coming of the new century by publishing a poem, The Pacificator, on the state of wit and poetry in England. The poem is actually about the politics of poetry, since the literary quarrels that had divided the nation were often allied to political and social disputes. Defoe borrowed from Sir Richard Blackmore the opposition of the ‘rich Sense’ that dominates genuine satire from the ‘empty Malice’ that lies behind the products of the Wits. Everything that Defoe wrote during 1701 was directed toward getting England involved in what was to be called the War of the Spanish Succession. In January 1701 Defoe published The True-Born Englishman, his first popular success and the most frequently reprinted poem of the reign of Queen Anne. Defoe went on to state that it was this work which brought him to the attention of William III.Less
On February 15, 1700, Daniel Defoe celebrated the coming of the new century by publishing a poem, The Pacificator, on the state of wit and poetry in England. The poem is actually about the politics of poetry, since the literary quarrels that had divided the nation were often allied to political and social disputes. Defoe borrowed from Sir Richard Blackmore the opposition of the ‘rich Sense’ that dominates genuine satire from the ‘empty Malice’ that lies behind the products of the Wits. Everything that Defoe wrote during 1701 was directed toward getting England involved in what was to be called the War of the Spanish Succession. In January 1701 Defoe published The True-Born Englishman, his first popular success and the most frequently reprinted poem of the reign of Queen Anne. Defoe went on to state that it was this work which brought him to the attention of William III.
Merrill D. Peterson
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195096453
- eISBN:
- 9780199853939
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195096453.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter describes the nation's reminiscence of Abe Lincoln, which differs from history as it was not based on historical documents but rather on people's memory. The author discusses the many ...
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This chapter describes the nation's reminiscence of Abe Lincoln, which differs from history as it was not based on historical documents but rather on people's memory. The author discusses the many virtues of Lincoln as remembered by the people who were able to meet him. This chapter also describes the many aspects of Abe Lincoln—s character—his droll humor which eventually mellowed as he matured; his alert, swift and ingenious wit; his clemency and tenderness; and his gift for words and poetry. This chapter also discusses the work of John George Nicolay and John Milton Hay, called Abraham Lincoln: A History which described the reminiscence of Lincoln and is said to be the true history of the American people in his time.Less
This chapter describes the nation's reminiscence of Abe Lincoln, which differs from history as it was not based on historical documents but rather on people's memory. The author discusses the many virtues of Lincoln as remembered by the people who were able to meet him. This chapter also describes the many aspects of Abe Lincoln—s character—his droll humor which eventually mellowed as he matured; his alert, swift and ingenious wit; his clemency and tenderness; and his gift for words and poetry. This chapter also discusses the work of John George Nicolay and John Milton Hay, called Abraham Lincoln: A History which described the reminiscence of Lincoln and is said to be the true history of the American people in his time.
Malcolm Andrews
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199651597
- eISBN:
- 9780191757075
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199651597.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
How does Dickens make us laugh? This is the principal focus in this book. How can words on a page fire off into the reader's consciousness and jolt him or her into a smile, a giggle, or a hearty ...
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How does Dickens make us laugh? This is the principal focus in this book. How can words on a page fire off into the reader's consciousness and jolt him or her into a smile, a giggle, or a hearty laugh? The book's method of composition has been essentially reactive. By and large, the author of this book has picked extracts from Dickens' novels, stories, journalism, and letters that have always made him laugh, and then explored (not necessarily discovered) how he has done it. This book approaches the topic through that route, rather than through any prefabricated theoretical framework. At the same time, this reactive exploration has found useful navigational impetus from some of the stimulating laughter theorists of the last century or so, in particular Herbert Spencer, Henri Bergson, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Arthur Koestler. The opening chapter examines how the young Dickens used the opportunity of Pickwick Papers' serialisation to develop his signature forms of humour — ‘Dickensian’ humour. Subsequent chapters discuss: Dickens'characteristic impulse to elaborate his comic anecdotes in a theatrical or pantomimic mode; his sense of coming timing; the exploitation of incongruity as a technique to stimulate laughter; the spectacle of collapsing dignity as a favoured humorous strategy; a survey of the wide range of types of laughers and laughter in Dickens' novels; and an investigation of what made Dickens himself laugh.Less
How does Dickens make us laugh? This is the principal focus in this book. How can words on a page fire off into the reader's consciousness and jolt him or her into a smile, a giggle, or a hearty laugh? The book's method of composition has been essentially reactive. By and large, the author of this book has picked extracts from Dickens' novels, stories, journalism, and letters that have always made him laugh, and then explored (not necessarily discovered) how he has done it. This book approaches the topic through that route, rather than through any prefabricated theoretical framework. At the same time, this reactive exploration has found useful navigational impetus from some of the stimulating laughter theorists of the last century or so, in particular Herbert Spencer, Henri Bergson, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Arthur Koestler. The opening chapter examines how the young Dickens used the opportunity of Pickwick Papers' serialisation to develop his signature forms of humour — ‘Dickensian’ humour. Subsequent chapters discuss: Dickens'characteristic impulse to elaborate his comic anecdotes in a theatrical or pantomimic mode; his sense of coming timing; the exploitation of incongruity as a technique to stimulate laughter; the spectacle of collapsing dignity as a favoured humorous strategy; a survey of the wide range of types of laughers and laughter in Dickens' novels; and an investigation of what made Dickens himself laugh.
Leslie Mitchell
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199295845
- eISBN:
- 9780191700729
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199295845.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Cecil Maurice Bowra was a great academic, and therefore became the focal point for traditional stories. The Oxford tribe found a reassuring continuity in retailing them. The same anthropological ...
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Cecil Maurice Bowra was a great academic, and therefore became the focal point for traditional stories. The Oxford tribe found a reassuring continuity in retailing them. The same anthropological device was discernible with regard to Oxford wit. Maurice was undoubtedly the master of the genre. His epigrams and command of irony circulated freely around the University. However his reputation was such that every funny story was attributed to him. Another compliment to Bowra's pre-eminence was that he was a target for teasing, in the way that schoolchildren secretly mock headmasters. Such acts combined affection and insubordination in a healthy mixture. Osbert Lancaster, who had been a member of the Bowra court as an undergraduate, frequently represented the distinctive features of his mentor in cartoons. Even more remarkable was the fact that Bowra's powerful personality proved irresistible to the novelist in search of good copy. No Oxford academic has been so frequently portrayed in literature.Less
Cecil Maurice Bowra was a great academic, and therefore became the focal point for traditional stories. The Oxford tribe found a reassuring continuity in retailing them. The same anthropological device was discernible with regard to Oxford wit. Maurice was undoubtedly the master of the genre. His epigrams and command of irony circulated freely around the University. However his reputation was such that every funny story was attributed to him. Another compliment to Bowra's pre-eminence was that he was a target for teasing, in the way that schoolchildren secretly mock headmasters. Such acts combined affection and insubordination in a healthy mixture. Osbert Lancaster, who had been a member of the Bowra court as an undergraduate, frequently represented the distinctive features of his mentor in cartoons. Even more remarkable was the fact that Bowra's powerful personality proved irresistible to the novelist in search of good copy. No Oxford academic has been so frequently portrayed in literature.
Charles P. Enz
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198564799
- eISBN:
- 9780191713835
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198564799.001.0001
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This book, the first biography on the life of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, analyses his scientific work and describes the evolution of his thinking. Pauli spent 30 years as a professor at the ...
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This book, the first biography on the life of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, analyses his scientific work and describes the evolution of his thinking. Pauli spent 30 years as a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich, which occupies a central place in this biography. It would be incomplete, however, without a rendering of Pauli’s sarcastic wit and, most importantly, of the world of his dreams. It is through the latter that quite a different aspect of Pauli’s life comes in, namely his association with the psychology of C. G. Jung and his school. This book sets Pauli’s life into historical context, based on original and unparalleled source material, including an extended account of his correspondence.Less
This book, the first biography on the life of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, analyses his scientific work and describes the evolution of his thinking. Pauli spent 30 years as a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich, which occupies a central place in this biography. It would be incomplete, however, without a rendering of Pauli’s sarcastic wit and, most importantly, of the world of his dreams. It is through the latter that quite a different aspect of Pauli’s life comes in, namely his association with the psychology of C. G. Jung and his school. This book sets Pauli’s life into historical context, based on original and unparalleled source material, including an extended account of his correspondence.
Thomas Keymer
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199245925
- eISBN:
- 9780191715341
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199245925.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Of the plurality of discourses and traditions that bump up against one another in Tristram Shandy, two have dominated attempts to make generic and hence interpretative sense of Sterne's richly ...
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Of the plurality of discourses and traditions that bump up against one another in Tristram Shandy, two have dominated attempts to make generic and hence interpretative sense of Sterne's richly heteroglot text. One strain of criticism reads Tristram Shandy as a belated exercise in Renaissance learned-wit; the other as a parody or deconstruction of representational conventions in the modern novel. Each identity, all too often, is presented as exclusive of the other. Yet to acknowledge the prominence of the learned-wit tradition in Sterne's writing need not be to deny the deliberacy of its engagement with newer forms. Instead, we may find a cornucopia of textual relations in which Menippean satire and metafictional self-consciousness coexist and unfold themselves in different intertextual modes, and display, as they do so, a hybridization of traditions and genres that in itself is typically novelistic. Sterne's satirical mode is characteristically determinate, involving necessary connections with specific precursors named, quoted, or otherwise verbally indicated in the text. His novelistic mode is characteristically aleatory, gesturing towards a plurality of potential intertexts through its play on terms, tropes, or conventions that all of them hold in common, but necessarily specifying no single one.Less
Of the plurality of discourses and traditions that bump up against one another in Tristram Shandy, two have dominated attempts to make generic and hence interpretative sense of Sterne's richly heteroglot text. One strain of criticism reads Tristram Shandy as a belated exercise in Renaissance learned-wit; the other as a parody or deconstruction of representational conventions in the modern novel. Each identity, all too often, is presented as exclusive of the other. Yet to acknowledge the prominence of the learned-wit tradition in Sterne's writing need not be to deny the deliberacy of its engagement with newer forms. Instead, we may find a cornucopia of textual relations in which Menippean satire and metafictional self-consciousness coexist and unfold themselves in different intertextual modes, and display, as they do so, a hybridization of traditions and genres that in itself is typically novelistic. Sterne's satirical mode is characteristically determinate, involving necessary connections with specific precursors named, quoted, or otherwise verbally indicated in the text. His novelistic mode is characteristically aleatory, gesturing towards a plurality of potential intertexts through its play on terms, tropes, or conventions that all of them hold in common, but necessarily specifying no single one.
Sarah Knight
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199698707
- eISBN:
- 9780191740756
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698707.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This study of Milton's representation of academic experience looks particularly at his Latin Prolusions, orations delivered while a student at Cambridge during the late 1620s and early 1630s. The ...
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This study of Milton's representation of academic experience looks particularly at his Latin Prolusions, orations delivered while a student at Cambridge during the late 1620s and early 1630s. The Prolusions blend speculative, satirical, and expository writing, collectively marked by mastery of rhetorical technique and unevenness of tone from speech to speech. Here Milton first discusses the proper management of a young man's education, and the university's function (or not) as a stimulating context for personal development. A comparison of these early discussions with Milton's other depictions of Cambridge in the Latin elegies, and also with his imaginary academies created in Of Education and Paradise Regained furnish an informative position developed over an extended period of time.Less
This study of Milton's representation of academic experience looks particularly at his Latin Prolusions, orations delivered while a student at Cambridge during the late 1620s and early 1630s. The Prolusions blend speculative, satirical, and expository writing, collectively marked by mastery of rhetorical technique and unevenness of tone from speech to speech. Here Milton first discusses the proper management of a young man's education, and the university's function (or not) as a stimulating context for personal development. A comparison of these early discussions with Milton's other depictions of Cambridge in the Latin elegies, and also with his imaginary academies created in Of Education and Paradise Regained furnish an informative position developed over an extended period of time.
Robert J. Fogelin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199739998
- eISBN:
- 9780199895045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199739998.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
After tying up some loose ends under the heading of clarifications, the main point of this final chapter is to show that this account of metaphors and other figurative comparisons goes beyond trite ...
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After tying up some loose ends under the heading of clarifications, the main point of this final chapter is to show that this account of metaphors and other figurative comparisons goes beyond trite examples like “Sally is a block of ice” to examine their use in rich literary contexts. This includes an examination of what this chapter calls metaphors of wit—cases where a comparison seems wildly farfetched, yet is brought home. There is also a discussion of the interaction of metaphors—the ways in which they can support and control one another. Going beyond the first edition, the notion of a figurative comparison is applied to the trope, synecdoche, and to two genres, fables and satires. The fables come form Aesop and Thurber, the satire from Swift.Less
After tying up some loose ends under the heading of clarifications, the main point of this final chapter is to show that this account of metaphors and other figurative comparisons goes beyond trite examples like “Sally is a block of ice” to examine their use in rich literary contexts. This includes an examination of what this chapter calls metaphors of wit—cases where a comparison seems wildly farfetched, yet is brought home. There is also a discussion of the interaction of metaphors—the ways in which they can support and control one another. Going beyond the first edition, the notion of a figurative comparison is applied to the trope, synecdoche, and to two genres, fables and satires. The fables come form Aesop and Thurber, the satire from Swift.
Christi A. Merrill
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823229550
- eISBN:
- 9780823241064
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823229550.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Can the subaltern joke? The author answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden — whether ...
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Can the subaltern joke? The author answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden — whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. She uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be carried across. She refigures translation as a performative telling in turn, from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between original and derivative, fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings. The playful lessons offered by these narratives provide insight into the networks of transnational relations connecting us across a sea of differences. Generations of multilingual audiences in India have been navigating this Ocean of the Stream of Stories since before the 11th century, arriving at a fluid sense of commonality across languages.Less
Can the subaltern joke? The author answers by invoking riddling, oral-based fictions from Hindi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, and Urdu that dare to laugh at what traditions often keep hidden — whether spouse abuse, ethnic violence, or the uncertain legacies of a divinely wrought sex change. She uses these examples to investigate the expectation that translated work should allow the non-English-speaking subaltern to speak directly to the English-speaking reader. She plays with the trope of speaking to argue against treating a translated text as property, as a singular material object to be carried across. She refigures translation as a performative telling in turn, from the Hindi word anuvad, to explain how a text might be multiply possessed. She thereby challenges the distinction between original and derivative, fundamental to nationalist and literary discourse, humoring our melancholic fixation on what is lost. Instead, she offers strategies for playing along with the subversive wit found in translated texts. Sly jokes and spirited double entendres, she suggests, require equally spirited double hearings. The playful lessons offered by these narratives provide insight into the networks of transnational relations connecting us across a sea of differences. Generations of multilingual audiences in India have been navigating this Ocean of the Stream of Stories since before the 11th century, arriving at a fluid sense of commonality across languages.
Carol Watts
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625642
- eISBN:
- 9780748671717
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625642.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
It has been reflected in this book that it is the climate of the Seven Years' War, shaped by a ‘global’ imperial conflict reaching tentacularly across continents, which is constitutive of the ...
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It has been reflected in this book that it is the climate of the Seven Years' War, shaped by a ‘global’ imperial conflict reaching tentacularly across continents, which is constitutive of the writerly dilemmas of Laurence Sterne's narratives; a crucible for the subjective universe they continuously unravel. The serpentine line, crazily idiosyncratic and ‘Shandean’ in its predilections, draws a self whose desires and imagination run across limits, stylistic individuation scripting its wayward tag against the grain of order and convention. Sterne's wayward lines trouble the ordered economy built on an imperial recta via and its careful calibration of the nonfreedom of others. His sermon on feasting and mourning indicates a sanguinity about the wild zone of the imagination. A deeper, unconditional gravity at the heart of Shandean wit, played out in its lesson to the world, ‘to let people tell their stories their own way’.Less
It has been reflected in this book that it is the climate of the Seven Years' War, shaped by a ‘global’ imperial conflict reaching tentacularly across continents, which is constitutive of the writerly dilemmas of Laurence Sterne's narratives; a crucible for the subjective universe they continuously unravel. The serpentine line, crazily idiosyncratic and ‘Shandean’ in its predilections, draws a self whose desires and imagination run across limits, stylistic individuation scripting its wayward tag against the grain of order and convention. Sterne's wayward lines trouble the ordered economy built on an imperial recta via and its careful calibration of the nonfreedom of others. His sermon on feasting and mourning indicates a sanguinity about the wild zone of the imagination. A deeper, unconditional gravity at the heart of Shandean wit, played out in its lesson to the world, ‘to let people tell their stories their own way’.
Matthew Bevis
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226652054
- eISBN:
- 9780226652221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226652221.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This introductory chapter sets up the main contours of the book's argument, situates the study of Wordsworth in relation to the history of his influence and reception, and begins to outline what ...
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This introductory chapter sets up the main contours of the book's argument, situates the study of Wordsworth in relation to the history of his influence and reception, and begins to outline what might be meant by "fun" and associated terms as they recur throughout the book (laughter, folly, play, humor, wit, and so on). It begins by offering a reading of the various "faces" of Wordsworth, then moves to a discussion of the poet's sustained interest in comic forms of achievement, and ends by turning to "Benjamin The Waggoner" as an exemplar of the peculiar kind of humor the book is interested in tracking.Less
This introductory chapter sets up the main contours of the book's argument, situates the study of Wordsworth in relation to the history of his influence and reception, and begins to outline what might be meant by "fun" and associated terms as they recur throughout the book (laughter, folly, play, humor, wit, and so on). It begins by offering a reading of the various "faces" of Wordsworth, then moves to a discussion of the poet's sustained interest in comic forms of achievement, and ends by turning to "Benjamin The Waggoner" as an exemplar of the peculiar kind of humor the book is interested in tracking.
