Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0211
Amanda Lagji
While other critics of Miguel Street have examined how humor arises from V. S. Naipaul’s somewhat condescending depiction of Miguel Street’s inhabitants, this analysis focuses on the role of laughter and the “colonial clown” in the social fabric of Miguel Street to produce social and political critique. In the text’s logic of laughter, this article argues that it is imperative to pay attention to the narrator’s commentary on misplaced, or solitary laughs as well. In particular, we should be alert to moments that the narrator explicitly identifies as not funny, and that should instead be taken seriously by readers. The “colonial clown” in Naipaul’s tragicomic stories not only captures the mimic elements of Naipaul’s characters, which are inarguably present in the novel, but also the important role of humor, laughter, and exaggeration in the narrator’s critical representation of the Trinidad of his childhood.
{"title":"Colonial Clowns?","authors":"Amanda Lagji","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0211","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 While other critics of Miguel Street have examined how humor arises from V. S. Naipaul’s somewhat condescending depiction of Miguel Street’s inhabitants, this analysis focuses on the role of laughter and the “colonial clown” in the social fabric of Miguel Street to produce social and political critique. In the text’s logic of laughter, this article argues that it is imperative to pay attention to the narrator’s commentary on misplaced, or solitary laughs as well. In particular, we should be alert to moments that the narrator explicitly identifies as not funny, and that should instead be taken seriously by readers. The “colonial clown” in Naipaul’s tragicomic stories not only captures the mimic elements of Naipaul’s characters, which are inarguably present in the novel, but also the important role of humor, laughter, and exaggeration in the narrator’s critical representation of the Trinidad of his childhood.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48277716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0242
J. Saunders
The red-capped, hook-nosed, serial killer Mr. Punch, a descendent of the Italian Pulcinella of the commedia dell’arte, belongs to the tradition of “bad” clowns—those tricksters who have populated the myths and folktales of cultures the world over for millennia. This article compares Punch’s disturbing antics to those of Pinter’s clowns who populate his short, political plays, One for the Road, The New World Order, Mountain Language and his lately discovered sketch The Pres and an Officer. Although much has been written about Pinter’s “comedy of menace,” this article offers a new perspective, exploring the comic contrivances that are endemic to both a Punch and Judy Show and Pinter’s depiction of state-sanctioned brutality, and how Pinter exploits the comic to underscore his political message.
{"title":"Punch Lines, Punching Bags, and Mr. Punch","authors":"J. Saunders","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0242","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The red-capped, hook-nosed, serial killer Mr. Punch, a descendent of the Italian Pulcinella of the commedia dell’arte, belongs to the tradition of “bad” clowns—those tricksters who have populated the myths and folktales of cultures the world over for millennia. This article compares Punch’s disturbing antics to those of Pinter’s clowns who populate his short, political plays, One for the Road, The New World Order, Mountain Language and his lately discovered sketch The Pres and an Officer. Although much has been written about Pinter’s “comedy of menace,” this article offers a new perspective, exploring the comic contrivances that are endemic to both a Punch and Judy Show and Pinter’s depiction of state-sanctioned brutality, and how Pinter exploits the comic to underscore his political message.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42279069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0172
Martin W. Kevorkian
In this conversation, Judith Yaross Lee reflects on the development of the field of humor studies, in which she plays such a central role, and does so by way of some of her major academic milestones as points along that path, with emphasis on her most recent work, beginning with Seeing Mad: Essays on Mad Magazine’s Humor and Legacy (2020).
{"title":"Comic Books and Funny Papers","authors":"Martin W. Kevorkian","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0172","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this conversation, Judith Yaross Lee reflects on the development of the field of humor studies, in which she plays such a central role, and does so by way of some of her major academic milestones as points along that path, with emphasis on her most recent work, beginning with Seeing Mad: Essays on Mad Magazine’s Humor and Legacy (2020).","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48807132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0165
R. Armantrout
Abstract:Prof. Armantrout here reflects on the various nuances and "notes" of the word "Folly." This commentary includes four poems: "Unquote"; "On Growth"; "Where Will You Spend Eternity"; and "Notice."
{"title":"The Poetry of Folly","authors":"R. Armantrout","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.2.0165","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Prof. Armantrout here reflects on the various nuances and \"notes\" of the word \"Folly.\" This commentary includes four poems: \"Unquote\"; \"On Growth\"; \"Where Will You Spend Eternity\"; and \"Notice.\"","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42332950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-21DOI: 10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0212
Torres
Abstract:The era known as modernity supposes a radical break from preceding historical periods. One of its characteristics is disenchantment or the significant diminution of that which symbolically and qualitatively anchors a community and its individuals. This is discerned in the twilight of the mythical hero1, as evidenced by Don Quixote de la Mancha. This work, where quixotic adventures embody the hero's journey, manifests the deterioration of this fundamental archetype. In Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, the effect of the symbolic and qualitative chasm generated by modernity is evident: the hero is helpless in the face of not only modern pharisaic society but also brute reality. Confrontation with material reality as such only deepens with the consolidation of modern capitalism. However, the impulse to carry out the mythical journey persists. This is evident in the Bildungsroman. This article will unearth the archetypal components of the novel of formation. A much-needed corrective to reverse the erasure of the Hispanophone literary tradition and world as it relates to the Bildungsroman is proposed. The other will be to establish a second novel of formation paradigm, namely The Sorrows of Young Werther.
{"title":"New World Modernity, the Hispanophone Literary Tradition, Werther, and the Sacred in the Bildungsroman: A Hermeneutic Shift","authors":"Torres","doi":"10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0212","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The era known as modernity supposes a radical break from preceding historical periods. One of its characteristics is disenchantment or the significant diminution of that which symbolically and qualitatively anchors a community and its individuals. This is discerned in the twilight of the mythical hero1, as evidenced by Don Quixote de la Mancha. This work, where quixotic adventures embody the hero's journey, manifests the deterioration of this fundamental archetype. In Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, the effect of the symbolic and qualitative chasm generated by modernity is evident: the hero is helpless in the face of not only modern pharisaic society but also brute reality. Confrontation with material reality as such only deepens with the consolidation of modern capitalism. However, the impulse to carry out the mythical journey persists. This is evident in the Bildungsroman. This article will unearth the archetypal components of the novel of formation. A much-needed corrective to reverse the erasure of the Hispanophone literary tradition and world as it relates to the Bildungsroman is proposed. The other will be to establish a second novel of formation paradigm, namely The Sorrows of Young Werther.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42772109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-21DOI: 10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0171
T. Jesse
Abstract:Despite all of his honors and awards, American poet John Ashbery was never able to escape the long-standing criticism of his work as apolitical. This is especially true for Ashbery's collage poems from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which represent some of his most avantgarde experiments with language—but also some of his most challenging, opaque texts to read. This article returns to an early collection of poems from this period, The Tennis Court Oath (1962), to reevaluate the criticisms of Ashbery's politics through the lens of Emily Apter's "unexceptional politics": a variety of micro-level political interventions that can, over time, impact macro-level politics on a national or even global scale. Using select concepts from Apter's text as a critical heuristic, this article demonstrates how the experiments of The Tennis Court Oath are deeply political in nature, opening up space within the dominant political discourses of the twentieth century in order to allow alternative narratives to make their presence known.
{"title":"John Ashbery's Unexceptional Politics","authors":"T. Jesse","doi":"10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0171","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Despite all of his honors and awards, American poet John Ashbery was never able to escape the long-standing criticism of his work as apolitical. This is especially true for Ashbery's collage poems from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which represent some of his most avantgarde experiments with language—but also some of his most challenging, opaque texts to read. This article returns to an early collection of poems from this period, The Tennis Court Oath (1962), to reevaluate the criticisms of Ashbery's politics through the lens of Emily Apter's \"unexceptional politics\": a variety of micro-level political interventions that can, over time, impact macro-level politics on a national or even global scale. Using select concepts from Apter's text as a critical heuristic, this article demonstrates how the experiments of The Tennis Court Oath are deeply political in nature, opening up space within the dominant political discourses of the twentieth century in order to allow alternative narratives to make their presence known.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47262816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-21DOI: 10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0157
S. Axelrod
Abstract:Allen Ginsberg functioned in Cold War culture as an oppositional figure, but his worldview was shaped by, and in some ways consistent with, the culture and habits of mind it critiques. This article posits that Ginsberg and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were doubles of each other, though doubles with a difference.
{"title":"Ginsberg's Brinkmanship","authors":"S. Axelrod","doi":"10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0157","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Allen Ginsberg functioned in Cold War culture as an oppositional figure, but his worldview was shaped by, and in some ways consistent with, the culture and habits of mind it critiques. This article posits that Ginsberg and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were doubles of each other, though doubles with a difference.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44679427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-21DOI: 10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0128
Carole-Anne Tyler
Abstract:We think of voice as a means of rational self-expression by which we convey our "interests" to others with competing interests. But language is a social contract preceding the social contract proper that it enables, raising questions about how and why someone makes sense of nonsense. Structuralists and poststructuralists argue the voice comes from the Other and is alienating. It constitutes speakers and interests both; speakers only seem to precede the words whose effect they are. As Benveniste shows, the pronouns "I" and "you" produce those represented by them as "echoes," reversible and reciprocal, just as in the universalism of political representation Spivak explores in her famous essay on the subaltern. Yet subjects are not fully alienated when interpellated by an Other or made entirely abstract by the universalism of names. Language affords a bonus sense from what might seem nonsense, as in jokes, which evade the censoring ego. Desire cannot be reduced to rational demands and is the remainder of language and the dialectic of subject and other, aligned with voice as what is left when the signified is subtracted from the signifier. There is a performative dimension to language as individuals take it up that subverts abstract universalism.
{"title":"The Voice of Reason","authors":"Carole-Anne Tyler","doi":"10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PACICOASPHIL.55.2.0128","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:We think of voice as a means of rational self-expression by which we convey our \"interests\" to others with competing interests. But language is a social contract preceding the social contract proper that it enables, raising questions about how and why someone makes sense of nonsense. Structuralists and poststructuralists argue the voice comes from the Other and is alienating. It constitutes speakers and interests both; speakers only seem to precede the words whose effect they are. As Benveniste shows, the pronouns \"I\" and \"you\" produce those represented by them as \"echoes,\" reversible and reciprocal, just as in the universalism of political representation Spivak explores in her famous essay on the subaltern. Yet subjects are not fully alienated when interpellated by an Other or made entirely abstract by the universalism of names. Language affords a bonus sense from what might seem nonsense, as in jokes, which evade the censoring ego. Desire cannot be reduced to rational demands and is the remainder of language and the dialectic of subject and other, aligned with voice as what is left when the signified is subtracted from the signifier. There is a performative dimension to language as individuals take it up that subverts abstract universalism.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44962137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0041
Justin Gautreau
This essay recovers Carroll and Garrett Graham's forgotten Hollywood novel Queer People (1930). I argue that the Graham brothers conceived of their novel not as a literary masterpiece but as a backdoor entrance into studio writing departments. Rather than assuming an audience of outsiders, as the Hollywood novel had tended to do, the Grahams wrote Queer People primarily to catch the attention of industry insiders. Like their protagonist's unconventional route to fame, they hoped their bold novel would lead to more respect and opportunity around town. Although Queer People was nearly adapted into a Hollywood film, it ultimately fell into obscurity as the industry kept it from ever reaching the screen.
{"title":"Staging Hollywood Scandal","authors":"Justin Gautreau","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0041","url":null,"abstract":"This essay recovers Carroll and Garrett Graham's forgotten Hollywood novel Queer People (1930). I argue that the Graham brothers conceived of their novel not as a literary masterpiece but as a backdoor entrance into studio writing departments. Rather than assuming an audience of outsiders, as the Hollywood novel had tended to do, the Grahams wrote Queer People primarily to catch the attention of industry insiders. Like their protagonist's unconventional route to fame, they hoped their bold novel would lead to more respect and opportunity around town. Although Queer People was nearly adapted into a Hollywood film, it ultimately fell into obscurity as the industry kept it from ever reaching the screen.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44879880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0027
Méline Dumot
Richard III is the perfect Shakespearean figure to look into the clowning tradition at play in the early modern theatrical world. Richard is a wise fool, who delivers the truth under comic appearances, as well as a buffoon, “deformed, unfinish'd, sent before [his] time” (Richard III, 1.3.21), who amuses the audience. Thomas Ostermeier, world renowned director of the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin (since 1999), presented his Richard III at the Avignon Festival (France) in July 2015. His favorite actor, Lars Eidinger, largely contributed to his success. The latter chose to play a particularly dynamic Richard, in connection with the figure of the medieval Vice. Richard's role marks the pinnacle of Eidinger's acting, with a strong emphasis on improvisation. The spectators are constantly solicited. Improvisation is the perfect form of communication for the clown who mocks his audience and adapts to the conditions of live performance. Thomas Ostermeier, a keen reader of Shakespearean criticism, revisits the figure of the medieval Vice: he deploys twenty-first-century playing techniques in order to explore a complex Shakespearean heritage. Eidinger’s play mode is a perfect illustration of how the clown figure can be revisited to offer a new experience to twenty-first-century audiences.
{"title":"A Contemporary Clown","authors":"Méline Dumot","doi":"10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.56.1.0027","url":null,"abstract":"Richard III is the perfect Shakespearean figure to look into the clowning tradition at play in the early modern theatrical world. Richard is a wise fool, who delivers the truth under comic appearances, as well as a buffoon, “deformed, unfinish'd, sent before [his] time” (Richard III, 1.3.21), who amuses the audience. Thomas Ostermeier, world renowned director of the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin (since 1999), presented his Richard III at the Avignon Festival (France) in July 2015. His favorite actor, Lars Eidinger, largely contributed to his success. The latter chose to play a particularly dynamic Richard, in connection with the figure of the medieval Vice. Richard's role marks the pinnacle of Eidinger's acting, with a strong emphasis on improvisation. The spectators are constantly solicited. Improvisation is the perfect form of communication for the clown who mocks his audience and adapts to the conditions of live performance. Thomas Ostermeier, a keen reader of Shakespearean criticism, revisits the figure of the medieval Vice: he deploys twenty-first-century playing techniques in order to explore a complex Shakespearean heritage. Eidinger’s play mode is a perfect illustration of how the clown figure can be revisited to offer a new experience to twenty-first-century audiences.","PeriodicalId":41712,"journal":{"name":"Pacific Coast Philology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41956838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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