Humour and dystopia: the comedy of entropy in Saramago and Ballard
Abstract
If the first half of the 20th century was marked by gloomy totalitarian dystopias characterized by ruthless military rule, the second half has seen a proliferation of apocalyptic narratives of socio-political entropy and moral collapse, whose unvarying results are universal suffering, and sometimes the extinction of life on the planet. This ‘entropic turn’ may also be accompanied by a change of tone, with drama giving in to dark humour – apparently a less despondent reaction to human self-destructiveness –, and the employment or manipulation of anachronistic narrative styles as well as serious parodies of foundational texts of Western civilization. This paper explores, compares and contrasts the various rhetorical strategies used by José Saramago in Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995) and J.G. Ballard in High Rise (1975) to depict equally dismal scenarios of human regression into barbarism, with a focus on the distinct nature of their humour.Downloads
References
Atkin, Rhian, “Are you sitting comfortably? Reading Saramago aloud”, Ellipsis, 6 (2008): 107-122.
Ballard, James Graham, High Rise (1975), London, Fourth Estate-HarperCollins, 2014, trad.it. Condominium, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2003.
Benjamin, Walter, Einbahnstraße (1928), trad.it. “Strada a senso unico”, in Strada a senso unico. Scritti 1926-1927, Ed. Giorgio Agamben, Torino, Einaudi, 1983.
Bertinetti, Roberto – Deidda, Angelo – Domenichelli, Mario, L’infondazione di Babele: l’antiutopia, Milano, Angeli, 1983.
Blacklock, Mark, “‘Vertige de l’hyperbole’: the humours of the High-Rise”, Critical Quarterly, 58.1 (2016): 90-95.
Bloom, Harold – Hobby, Blake (eds.), Dark Humor, New York, Bloom’s Literary Criticism, 2010.
Booker, M. Keith, The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature, Westport-London, Greenwood, 1994.
Curi, Umberto, La forza dello sguardo, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2004.
Ejchenbaum, Boris, “Com’è fatto Il cappotto di Gogol’” (1927), I formalisti russi, Ed. Tzvetan Todorov, Torino, Einaudi, 1968.
Giglioli, Daniele, Senza trauma. Scrittura dell’estremo e narrativa del nuovo millennio, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2011.
Graham, Stephen, “Vertical Noir. Histories of the future in urban science fiction”, City, 20.3 (2016): 389-406.
Jameson, Frederic, “Introduction/Prospectus: To Reconsider the Relationship of Marxism to Utopian Thought” (1976), The Jameson Reader, Eds. Michael Hardt - Kathi Weeks, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000.
Muzzioli, Francesco, Scritture della catastrofe, Roma, Meltemi, 2007.
Oliveira, Raquel Trentin - Werlang, Gérson, “Dialogism in Portuguese Contemporary Novel”, Bakhtiniana, 8.1 (2013): 175-190.
O’Neill, Patrick, “The Comedy of Entropy: The Contexts of Black Humour”, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 10.2 (1983): 145-166.
Saramago, José, Ensaio sobre a cegueira, Lisboa, Caminho, 1995, trad. it. Cecità, Torino, Einaudi, 1998.
Sellars, Simon - O’Hara, Dan (eds.), Extreme Metaphors: Interviews with J.G. Ballard, 1967–2008, London, Fourth Estate, 2012.
Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto, “The Excremental Gaze: Saramago’s Blindness and the Disintegration of the Panoptic Vision”, Critique, 45.3 (2004): 293-308.
Stegagno Picchio, Luciana, José Saramago. Istantanee per un ritratto, Firenze, Passigli, 2000.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
