Humor and Transgression in Peacock, Shelley, and Bryon: A Cold Carnival

by Thomas H. Schmid

Examines with singular determination the subject of the comic in romanticism. Deliberately proposing an alternative mode to either neoclassical satire or Schlegelian irony, Humor and Transgression shows how major comic works of the Shelley circle sympathetically laugh at the limitations of various cultural and textual "frames" imposed upon both the comic object and the writer. Making deft use of contemporary literary theorists, particularly Umberto Eco and Mikhail Bakhtin, the book presents a timely contribution to Romantic studies that rightly restores the humor to readings of texts like Shelley's Witch of Atlas and Byron's Beppo, thus filling a longstanding gap in studies of the comic between the neoclassical and Victorian periods.

164 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1992