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Containing Humour: the Humorist As Prisoner in Twentieth-Century Literature

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Containing Humour: the Humorist As Prisoner in Twentieth-Century Literature Containing Humour: The Humorist as Prisoner in Twentieth-Century Literature by Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard 2017 Containing Humour: The Humorist as Prisoner in Twentieth-century Literature Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2017 Abstract The boundary-crossing categories of the prison, society, and the body, are spaces of constraint for literary characters which trigger humour in the works of five twentieth-century authors: Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Luigi Pirandello. These categories encompass a multiplicity of configurations of imprisonment, from the prison cell to ventriloquism. In twentieth-century fictions, spaces of imprisonment not only provide the setting and the cause for many humoristic situations, but they often become the root of a humoristic view of the human condition. Taking imprisonment as a concrete spatial setting or a metaphorical image, my work analyzes confinement as a trigger for humour—indeed, as an essential structural condition for the emergence of twentieth-century humour. By comparing prominent modernist authors such as Nabokov and Pirandello with less studied ones such as Guareschi, individual thematic studies highlight the development of a paradigm which crosses languages, literary genres, and so-called national styles. Chapter 1 maps out a theoretical and chronological outline of humour in the twentieth century, highlighting recurring structures such as the split self, the association of opposites or the self-reflexivity inherent in humour, in order to prepare the ground for the following three thematic ii chapters, centred around the figures of the prison cell, society, and the body. Chapter 2 discusses three cases of political imprisonment in the fiction of Guareschi, Gary and Nabokov. Chapter 3 considers the difficult social positioning of three types of characters Bakhtin identifies as influential in the development of modern fiction, the Fool, the Rogue and the Clown, by singling out three characters in the works of Pirandello, Lewis, and Gary. Chapter 4 deals with the negotiation of bodily imprisonment and discusses characters either trapped within their own bodies (Nabokov, Guareschi) or the bodies of others (Gary). I conclude by reflecting on humour’s geometry, highlighting the main structure underlying the relationship between humour and imprisonment in the fiction studied: the figure of the prison frames the unceasing oscillatory movement of literary humour, paradoxically asserting the narratives’ desire to expand and not to conclude. iii Résumé Cette thèse explore les catégories de la prison, de la société et du corps comme espaces de contrainte provoquant la création de l’humour dans l’œuvre de cinq auteurs : Romain Gary, Giovannino Guareschi, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov et Luigi Pirandello. Ces catégories comprennent une multiplicité de configurations de l’emprisonnement, de la cellule de prison à la ventriloquie. Dans les œuvres à l’étude, les espaces de l’emprisonnement fournissent non seulement le cadre et la cause de nombreuses situations humoristiques, mais deviennent aussi souvent la source même de la conception humoristique de la vie développée par les personnages. En considérant l’emprisonnement à la fois comme environnement physique concret et comme image métaphorique, j’analyse le confinement comme amorce pour l’humour — en fait, comme condition structurelle essentielle à l’émergence de l’humour au vingtième siècle. En comparant des auteurs éminents dans leurs contextes respectifs, comme Nabokov et Pirandello, avec des auteurs encore peu étudiés tels que Guareschi, mes études relèvent la présence d’un paradigme qui s’établit au-delà des barrières linguistiques, des genres littéraires et des styles « nationaux ». Le Chapitre 1 établit le cadre théorique en lisant les théories de façon chronologique, et en soulignant les structures récurrentes telles que le clivage du moi, l’association des contraires et l’autoréflexivité inhérente à l’humour, afin de préparer le terrain pour les trois chapitres thématiques qui suivent, centrés autour des figures de la prison, de la société et du corps. Le Chapitre 2, « Humour in the Cell: Prison Cells and War Camps » (« L’humour en cellule : cellules de prison et camps de guerre »), traite de trois cas d’emprisonnement politique dans la fiction de Guareschi, Gary et Nabokov. Le Chapitre 3, « Social Entrapment: Humoristic Characters vs. the World » (« Le piège social : les personnages humoristiques contre le monde ») considère le positionnement social difficile de trois types de personnages identifiés par Bakhtin comme étant au cœur du développement de la fiction moderne, soit le sot, le fripon et le bouffon, en iv sélectionnant trois personnages des œuvres de Pirandello, Lewis et Gary. Enfin, le Chapitre 4, « Humour in the Cells: Configurations of the Body as Prison » (« L’humour en cellules : configurations du corps comme prison »), traite de la négociation de l’emprisonnement corporel chez des personnages prisonniers de leurs propres corps (Nabokov, Guareschi) ou du corps d’un autre personnage (Gary). Je conclus par une réflexion sur la géométrie de l’humour qui souligne le mouvement de fond gouvernant la relation de l’humour à l’emprisonnement dans la fiction étudiée : la figure de la prison sert ainsi de cadre pour contenir le mouvement oscillatoire incessant de l’humour littéraire, faisant paradoxalement valoir le désir d’expansion de la forme narrative. v AcKnowledgments I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, to the University of Toronto for the Avie Bennett Award, to the Jackman Humanities Institute for the Chancellor Jackman Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities, and to the Ontario government for the Lorie Waisberg Ontario Graduate Scholarship, that have made this research possible. I would like to thank all the people who have supported me, and to acknowledge the places that have hosted my writing. My co-directors, Pascal Michelucci and Luca Somigli, and my advisor Ann Komaromi, have been invaluable for the breadth of their knowledge, their constant help and their faith in my project from its inception to the end of the writing process. I want to thank Jill Ross, Eva-Lynn Jagoe, Linda Hutcheon, and Veronika Ambros for their professional and personal advice and support, as well as Bao Nguyen and Aphrodite Gardner of the Centre for Comparative Literature for being awesome. I sincerely thank Miranda Hickman for her generous reading and attentive comments as external appraiser on my final oral examination. I am indebted to the 2014-2015 Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) fellows and to the members of the 2015-2016 JHI Working Group “Humour, Seriously,” and particularly to Matt Cohn, Maggie Hennefeld, Peter Jones and Matt Risling for sharing their passion for humour studies with me. My kind thanks go to Alberto Guareschi and the late Carlotta Guareschi for their precious help before, during and after my 2014 visit to the Archivio Giovannino Guareschi in Roncole Verdi, and to Simonetta Bartolini, for her 2008 course dedicated to Guareschi and theories of humour, at La Libera Università degli Studi Per l’Innovazione e le Organizzazioni (LUSPIO). I am thankful to Christina Vani for her feedback on some of my translations from Italian. Thank you to the organizers, lecturers and participants of the International Summer School and Symposium in Brașov in July 2016, and to the organizers and participants of the Comparative Literature Students’ Tribune/La tribune des étudiant-e-s en littérature comparée for their encouragement, comments and feedback. I warmly thank the Knox College community, and especially Daniela D’Aniello and my friends William George, Alex Nica and Laura Grace Conlon. I am grateful to all my Toronto friends for their support and sense of community. Thank you Catherine Cheng, Isabella Huberman, Natasha Hay, Élise Couture-Grondin, Irina Sadovina, Nefise Kahraman, Catherine Schwartz, Jessica Copley, Katie Fry, Julie St-Laurent, Amanda Hsieh, Christina Brassard, ainsi que Lily Han et tous les Chameaux de Québec. From a brutalist carrel to the great Canadian plains, this thesis has been shaped by the surroundings of its writer. I thank Arnaud and Alexandra, in whose home I wrote the first lines of this work, and I am grateful for the existence and welcome of Knox College, the Centre for Comparative Literature, the University of Toronto’s dozens of libraries, Toronto’s coffee shops and Bampot House of Tea, Via Rail trains, as well as Saint-Jean-de-Brébeuf, Gafsa, London, Oxford, Dublin, Montréal, Ottawa, Québec City, la Côte-Nord, Roncole Verdi, Rome and Brașov. vi Je remercie ma mère et ma sœur pour leur appui, leur amour, leur patience et les mille cartes postales qui ont embelli le cubicule brutaliste. Nicolas, merci pour ta présence à mes côtés à Momaco, et pour ta soif de savoir et de beauté d’art. Je dédie cette thèse à la mémoire de mon père. À son humour. À sa liberté. vii Table of Contents Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ...........................................................................................................................1
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