Stephen Leacock: Humour and HumanityFrom the preface: "Stephen Leacock is still often regarded as a writer of lightweight amusements and unchallenging satire, as an author without an imaginative centre who lacked a vision of sufficient power and clarity to sustain a lifetime of serious writing. According to this view, which has been too easily received, Leacock squandered an early, promising talent (though he was in fact, middle-aged when he published Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town in 1912), and consequently his writings, like his legendary Lord Ronald, "rode madly off in all directions." After years of chasing down Leacock's numerous literary mounts, I can assert that none of this is true. Leacock's writing emerges from a centre that is the confluence of the two traditions of humanism and toryism, traditions that found in Leacock fertile ground for the propagation of such qualities as tolerance of human fallibility and acceptance of social responsibility. What is remarkable with respect to Leacock's literary output is that even his furthest-flung, seemingly inconsequential humourous pieces move in relation to this tory-humanist centre." Lynch invites us to accompany him on an odyssey through Leacock's two main works, Sunshine Sketches and Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich ... He aspires to enlighten the open-minded reader, and is highly successful in doing so." Elspeth Cameron, Coordinator of Canadian Literature and Language Program, New College, University of Toronto |
Contents
3 | |
Leacocks Theory of Humour | 24 |
Mariposa Versus Mr Smith | 57 |
4 Religion and Romance in Mariposa En Voiture | 86 |
The City of the End of Things | 121 |
Religion and Politics in Plutoria | 152 |
7 Humour and Humanity | 173 |
Notes | 177 |
Index | 195 |
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Common terms and phrases
Anglican appearance Arcadian Adventures auditor beacon Boomer Boulder caff Canada Canadian century chapter character church comic concludes Concordia College contrast Desmond Pacey Dickens Drone Duke enchanted Envoi narrator fiction Furlong Fyshe Grand Palaver Hazlitt's human humorous literature humour ideal illusion incongruity individual ironic irony Jeff Jeff's Josh Smith Judge Pepperleigh kindly L'Envoi laughter Leacock's narrator Leacock's view liberal liberty literary love story Marine Excursion Mariposa Belle Matthew Hodgart Mausoleum Club McClelland and Stewart McTeague moral narrator's nineteenth Norah norm Northrop Frye plutocracy plutocrats plutorian political preface present progress Pupkin Pupkin Senior Rasselyer-Brown reader reality religion remarks reveal Robertson Davies romantic love satire satirist sentimentality social society Spillikins spirit St Asaph's Stephen Leacock suggests Sunshine Sketches super-self theory of humour things Tomlinson Toronto tory tory-humanist toryism Train to Mariposa University Victorian Whirlwind Campaign writes Yahi-Bahi Zena