COMEDY

INTRODUCTION 13themselves made into a thing by nature. De Man continues by addingthat humans largely know the world as a ‘language-determined’experience, in which everything is perceived through a linguisticframework. Ironic language, the language of the Fall, is language thatexpresses the ‘inauthentic’ nature of the subject’s relationship to theworld:The ironic language splits the subject into an empirical self thatexists in a state of inauthenticity and a self that exists only in theform of a language that asserts the knowledge of thisinauthenticity. This does not, however, make it into an authenticlanguage, for to know authenticity is not the same as to beauthentic.(de Man, 1983:214)Thus in irony, the subject is divided into an inauthentic self, and aself that knows itself to be inauthentic. In various ways, all the ideasdiscussed above suggest that in some experience of the comic there is adivision of consciousness that enables the subject to see the world withbifurcated vision. Instances of joking, humour, or irony invoke aseparation between ‘authorized’, egocentric, or rational versions of theworld and their revealed alternatives, commenting on establishedconventions as they go. This does not mean that joking opens up a pathto ‘truth’, or even that it has the ability to cut through untruths, as itgenerally does not provide coherent counter-arguments and its efficacyas a platform for change is questionable. Indeed, we would have to saythat the duality enabled in joking and comic scenarios opposes anyunivocal interpretation of the world. Given this principle, this book willnot attempt to explain comedy in accordance with a singlemethodological framework or narrative of literary development.Instead, we shall approach comedy thematically, accepting whatappears to be its bifurcated nature by treating it as a multifaceted anddiverse series of events, rather than a generic totality, and evokingparticular theories or concepts only whenever they might usefully helpus to understand comic ideas.Chapter 1 considers the reputation of comedy in academic andscholarly circles, assessing the status of the genre in works of literarycriticism and the professionalized literary studies undertaken inuniversity departments. Here we will see that the reputation of comedysuffers from both the lack of a foundational manifesto and anassociation with popular culture that results in its denigration and