Cannibals and Catholics: Reading the Reading of Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-2010

Journal / Book Title

Modernist Cultures

Abstract

Jonathan Greenberg (Montclair State University) explores satire's unstable dynamic of enjoyment and identification, one always threatening to careen out of the author's control. As an example of this instability, Greenberg offers the messy public debate in which Waugh attempted to defend himself from the Catholic press's charge that his novel “Black Mischief” was an immoral book, and Greenberg uses this debate as a point of departure to explore satire's dialectical nature: the structural inextricability of morality and sadistic pleasure, outrage and amusement, anger and blasé indifference.

DOI

doi.org/10.3366/E2041102209000239

Published Citation

Greenberg, Jonathan. "Cannibals and Catholics: Reading the Reading of Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief". Modernist Cultures, Volume 2 Issue 2, Page 115-137, ISSN 2041-1022 Available Online May 2010. doi:10.3366/E2041102209000239

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