Part of a series whose goal is to see literature as central to all human sciences, this book identifies satire not as a genre of writing or of humor but as a set of language techniques. The book has two core claims. One is that the answer to the question what is satire? is that it is three techniques: inversion (saying things backward), mythification (blowing things up to a grand scale), and citation (making a work that refers to another work). The book is divided into one section on each. The other claim is that these techniques are central to postmodernist theory, and that they derive from writing and contemporary literature in turn depends on postmodernist theory. The book is specifically about writing in Germany after WWII. The claims and analysis are all done with semiotics. The book will be of interest to academic theorists focused on semiotics. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
How are we to think of satire if it has ceased to exist as a discrete genre? This study proposes a novel solution, understanding the satiric in the postwar era as a set of writing practices: figures of inversion, myth-making, and citation. By showing how writers and theorists alike deploy these devices in new contexts, this book reexamines the link between German postwar writing and the history of satire, and between literature and theory.
