Subject Area
Literature
Description
This dissertation examines the nature and function of
John Hawkes' comic method. Although most critics acknowledge
that Hawkes writes comedy, very few of them
agree on the moral nature of this comedy. Chapter I
examines these differing responses to Hawkes' work and
offers an alternative way of evaluating his humor, based
on his own and other critics' comments on comedy. This
chapter also suggests that our responses to Hawkes' humor
occur on an uncertain terrain where two or more, sometimes
opposite, reactions to a text clash, forcing us into continuous
moments of indecision.
Chapter II deals with Hawkes' first novel, Charivari,
which is important because in it we find Hawkes experimenting
with comic techniques which he employs in later
novels.
Chapter III explains how comic techniques in The Lime
Twig trap us between our emotional, moral, intellectual,
viand aesthetic concerns for Michael and Margaret Banks and
William Hencher. Comedy forces us to judge these characters’
human failings, though we also sympathize with them
and recognize our own faults in them.
Chapter IV discusses Skipper's contradictory nature in
Second Skin, explaining how comic techniques make us question
his attractive self-portrait and realize his responsibility
for the tragic events in the novel.
Chapter V illustrates what happens to comedy in The
Blood Oranges, Death, Sleep & the Traveler, and Travesty
when we become less concerned with the comedy of character
and action and more interested in the author behind
the trilogy who is playing with language and form.
Chapter VI deals with The Passion Artist and Virginie:
Her Two Lives. In Hawkes' most recent novels the nature
and function of comedy is not always clear because Hawkes
seems to treat seriously the same sexual attitudes and
practices that he ridiculed in previous novels. This
chapter ends by suggesting that Hawkes' comedy is maximized
when, as in The Lime Twig and Second Skin, all of
our concerns—emotional, moral, intellectual, and
aesthetic—are played off each other, so that, as Hawkes
himself says, we are challenged "to know ourselves better
and to live with more compassion."
Publisher
University of New Hampshire
Publication Date
Fall 12-1983
Type
Dissertation
Format
Text
.pdf (text under image)
Language
English
