Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity PDF
Preview Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity
Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity This page intentionally left blank Stephen Leacock Humour and Humanity GERALD LYNCH McGill-Queen's University Press Kingston and Montreal ©McGill-Queen's University Press 1988 ISBN 0-7735-0652-7 Legal deposit third quarter 1988 Bibliotheque Rationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, us- ing funds provided by the Social Sciences and Human- ities Research Council of Canada. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lynch, Gerald, 1953- Rounded with a smile: Stephen Leacock's tory-human- ist humour Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-0652-7 i. Leacock, Stephen, 1869-1944 - Criticism and inter- pretation. I. Title. PS8523.E15Z76 1988 c8i8'.52O9 088-090143-8 PR9199.3.1,367778 1988 This book is dedicated to Mary Jo. This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii 1 The Middle Way: An Introduction to Leacock's Tory-Humanist Norm 3 2 Between Satire and Sentimentality: Leacock's Theory of Humour 24 3 Sunshine Sketches: Mariposa Versus Mr Smith 57 4 Religion and Romance in Mariposa - En Voiture! 86 5 Arcadian Adventures: The City of the End of Things 121 6 Between a Vault and a Dark Place: Religion and Politics in Plutoria 152 7 Humour and Humanity 173 Notes 177 Index 195 This page intentionally left blank Prefa ce Stephen Leacock is still often regarded as a writer of lightweight amusements and unchallenging satire, as an author without an im- aginative centre who lacked a vision of sufficient power and clarity to sustain a lifetime of serious writing. According to this view, which has been too easily accepted, Leacock squandered an early, prom- ising talent (though he was, in fact, middle-aged when in 1912 he published Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town), and consequently his writings, like his legendary Lord Ronald, "rode madly off in all directions." After years of chasing down Leacock's numerous literary mounts, I can assert that none of this is true. Leacock's writings emerge from a centre that is the confluence of the two traditions of humanism and toryism, traditions that found in Leacock fertile ground for the propagation of such qualities as a tolerance of human fallibility and an acceptance of social responsibility. What is re- markable with respect to Leacock's literary output is that even his furthest-flung, seemingly inconsequential humorous pieces move in relation to this tory-humanist centre. Without an understanding of Leacock's humanism and toryism, the understanding that he made readily accessible in The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920) and Our Heritage of Liberty (1942), even his theory of humour will seem, especially in view of his otherwise firmly stated opinions, somehow curiously limp, if not insipid, in its insistence on the need for "kin- dliness." And without the context of Leacock's tory humanism and
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