Framing Literary Humour : Cells, Masks and Bodies As 20th-Century Sites of Imprisonment

Contrary to what their oppressive design could lead us to believe, might structures of imprisonment actually incite humour, itself a form of liberation? Starting from the most obvious areas of imprisonment (war camps, prison cells) and moving to the less obvious (masks, bodies), Framing Literary Humour demonstrates how 20th-century humour in theory and in fiction cannot be fully understood without a careful look at its connection with the notion of imprisonment. Understanding imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard analyses selected works of Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello to reconfigure confinement as an essential structural condition for the emergence of humour. "Contrary to their oppressive design, might structures of imprisonment actually incite humour, itself a form of liberation? Starting from the most obvious cases of imprisonment (war camps, prison cells) and moving to the less obvious (masks, bodies), Containing Humour demonstrates how 20th-century humour in theory and in fiction cannot be fully understood without a careful look at its connection with the notion of imprisonment. Understanding imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard analyzes selected works of Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello to reconfigure confinement as an essential structural condition for the emergence of humour"-- Provided by publisher Contrary to what their oppressive design would lead us to believe, might structures of imprisonment actually incite humour? Starting from the most obvious areas of imprisonment (war camps, prison cells) and moving to the less obvious (masks, bodies), Framing Literary Humour demonstrates how 20th-century humour in theory and in fiction cannot be fully understood without a careful look at its connection with the notion of imprisonment. Understanding imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard analyses selected works of Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello to reconfigure confinement as an essential structural condition for the emergence of humour. Cover 1 Contents 8 Preface and Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 10 1 Humour and Imprisonment 22 2 Humour in the Cell: Prison Cellsand War Camps 52 3 Social Entrapment: HumoristicCharacters vs. the World 92 4 Humour in the Cells: Configurationsof the Body as Prison 130 Conclusion: A Geometry of Humour 174 Notes 184 References 195 Index 202 Humour and imprisonment -- Humour in the cell: prison cells and war camps -- Social entrapment: humoristic characters vs. the world -- Humour in the cells: configurations of the body as prison -- Conclusion: a geometry of humour