Table Of ContentBloom's Literary Th emes
f
Alienation
Th e American Dream
Civil Disobedience
Dark Humor
Death and Dying
Enslavement and Emancipation
Exploration and Colonization
Th e Grotesque
Th e Hero’s Journey
Human Sexuality
Th e Labyrinth
Rebirth and Renewal
Sin and Redemption
Th e Sublime
Th e Taboo
Th e Trickster
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Bloom’s Literary Th emes
DARK HUMOR
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Bloom’s Literary Th emes
DARK H UMOR
Edited and with an introduction by
Harold Bloom
Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University
Volume Editor
Blake Hobby
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Bloom’s Literary Themes: Dark Humor
Copyright ©2010 by Infobase Publishing
Introduction ©2010 by Harold Bloom
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloom’s literary themes. Dark humor / edited and with an introduction by Harold
Bloom ; volume editor, Blake Hobby.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60413-440-7 (hc : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4381-3102-3 (e-book)
1. Black humor. 2. Humor in literature.
I. Bloom, Harold. II. Hobby, Blake. III. Title: Dark humor.
PN56.H83B56 2010
809.7—dc22
2009038091
Bloom’s Literary Criticism books are available at special discounts when purchased in
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our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755.
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Series design by Kerry Casey
Cover design by Takeshi Takahashi
Composition by IBT Global, Inc.
Cover printed by IBT Global, Inc., Troy NY
Book printed and bound by IBT Global, Inc., Troy NY
Date printed: January 2010
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
, .
Contents
Series Introduction by Harold Bloom:
Th emes and Metaphors xi
Volume Introduction by Harold Bloom xv
Th e Plays of Aristophanes 1
“Aristophanes’ Comic Apocalypse” by Louise Cowan,
in Th e Terrain of Comedy (1984)
Th e Plays of Samuel Beckett and the Th eatre of the Absurd 29
“Th e Th eatre of the Absurd” by Martin Esslin, in
Th eatre in the Twentieth Century (1956)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) 47
“Catch-22 and Angry Humor: A Study of the
Normative Values of Satire” by James Nagel, in
Studies in American Humor (1974)
Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut) 57
“Dark Humor in Cat’s Cradle” by Blake Hobby
A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) 67
“A Clockwork Orange and the Metaphysics of Slapstick”
by Matthew J. Bolton
On Dark Humor in Literature 79
“Th e Comedy of Entropy: Th e Contexts of Black
Humour” by Patrick O’Neill, in Canadian Review of
Comparative Literature (1983)
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viii Contents Contents
Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) 105 White Noise (Don DeLillo) 229
“Elements of Dark Humor in Dante’s Divine Comedy” “The Dark Humor of White Noise” by Joseph Dewey
by Lauren P. De La Vars
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee) 241
The Dumbwaiter (Harold Pinter) 115 “Dark Humor in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
“When Farce Turns into Something Else: Harold Virginia Woolf ? ” by Kate Falvey
Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter” by Scott Walters
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) 251
The Stories of Nikolai Gogol and Lolita “ ‘Too Terribly Good to Be Printed’: Charlotte
(Vladimir Nabokov) 127 Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ ” by Conrad
“Observations on Black Humor in Gogol and Shumaker, in American Literature (1985)
Nabokov” by Woodin W. Rowe, in The Slavic and East
European Journal (1974) Acknowledgments 263
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (Flannery O’Connor) 139 Index 265
“Clichés, Superficial Story-Telling, and the Dark
Humor of Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is
Hard to Find’ ” by Robert C. Evans
Henry IV, Parts One and Two (William Shakespeare) 149
“The Rejection of Falstaff” by A.C. Bradley, in Oxford
Lectures on Poetry (1909)
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
(Thomas Stearns Eliot) 171
“ ‘Almost Ridiculous’: Dark Humor in Eliot’s ‘The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ ” by Robert C. Evans
A Modest Proposal (Jonathan Swift) 181
“Wood’s Halfpence” by Leslie Stephen, in Swift (1882)
The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain) 197
“The Mysterious Stranger and ‘3,000 Years Among the
Microbes’: Chimerical Realities and Nightmarish
Transformations” by Patricia M. Mandia, in Comedic
Pathos: Black Humor in Twain’s Fiction (1991)
Reservation Blues (Sherman Alexie) 219
“The Saddest Joke: Sherman Alexie’s Blues” by James
A. Crank
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Contents Contents ix
Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri) 105 White Noise (Don DeLillo) 229
“Elements of Dark Humor in Dante’s Divine Comedy” “The Dark Humor of White Noise” by Joseph Dewey
by Lauren P. De La Vars
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee) 241
The Dumbwaiter (Harold Pinter) 115 “Dark Humor in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of
“When Farce Turns into Something Else: Harold Virginia Woolf ? ” by Kate Falvey
Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter” by Scott Walters
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) 251
The Stories of Nikolai Gogol and Lolita “ ‘Too Terribly Good to Be Printed’: Charlotte
(Vladimir Nabokov) 127 Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ ” by Conrad
“Observations on Black Humor in Gogol and Shumaker, in American Literature (1985)
Nabokov” by Woodin W. Rowe, in The Slavic and East
European Journal (1974) Acknowledgments 263
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (Flannery O’Connor) 139 Index 265
“Clichés, Superficial Story-Telling, and the Dark
Humor of Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is
Hard to Find’ ” by Robert C. Evans
Henry IV, Parts One and Two (William Shakespeare) 149
“The Rejection of Falstaff” by A.C. Bradley, in Oxford
Lectures on Poetry (1909)
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
(Thomas Stearns Eliot) 171
“ ‘Almost Ridiculous’: Dark Humor in Eliot’s ‘The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ ” by Robert C. Evans
A Modest Proposal (Jonathan Swift) 181
“Wood’s Halfpence” by Leslie Stephen, in Swift (1882)
The Mysterious Stranger (Mark Twain) 197
“The Mysterious Stranger and ‘3,000 Years Among the
Microbes’: Chimerical Realities and Nightmarish
Transformations” by Patricia M. Mandia, in Comedic
Pathos: Black Humor in Twain’s Fiction (1991)
Reservation Blues (Sherman Alexie) 219
“The Saddest Joke: Sherman Alexie’s Blues” by James
A. Crank
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