Readings in British Literature, chiefly (but not exclusively) from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Studies how modes of verbal and visual humor inform ideologies, construct social identities, mock deviants and encourage deviance, tell the truth and expel the truth-teller, topple monarchs and enforce social order.
Satire! Irony! Farce! Parody! Silly walks! Performance art!
Including works by: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, William Hogarth, William Blake, Jane Austen, Robert Browning, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Samuel Beckett, W. H. Auden, Barbara Pym, Lucian Freud, Phillip Larkin, Tom Stoppard, Sue Townsend, John Cleese and the Monty Python Troupe, Jeanette Winterson, Tracy Emin, and Bansky.
