Reading Paul Howard: The Art of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Reading Paul Howard: The Art of Ross OCarroll Kelly is a book that examines the narrative devices, satirical modes, cultural context, and humor in Ross OCarroll Kelly's texts. It argues that his academic critical neglect is due to a division in Irish Studies between high and popular culture and uses the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, Sigmund Freud, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Jacques Derrida to critique this division. The book locates Howard in a tradition of Irish satirical writing that dates back to the Gaelic bards and makes the case for him as a significant and original voice in Irish writing, whose fusion of the three traditional types of satire has created a parallel Ireland that shines a satirical light on its real counterpart.

Format: Hardback
Length: 234 pages
Publication date: 22 December 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Reading Paul Howard: The Art of Ross OCarroll Kelly offers a comprehensive exploration of narrative techniques, satirical modes, cultural context, and humor in Howard's writings. The volume argues that his academic critical neglect is due to a classic bifurcation in Irish Studies between high and popular culture, and it will use the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, Sigmund Freud, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Jacques Derrida to critique this division, building a theoretical platform from which to examine the significance of Howard's work as an Irish comic and satirical writer. Addressing both the style and the substance of his work, this text locates him in a tradition of Irish satirical writing that dates back to the Gaelic bards, including writers like Swift, Wilde, Flann O'Brien, and Joyce. Through textual and contextual analysis, this book makes the case for Howard as a significant and original voice in Irish writing, whose fusion of the three traditional types of satire (Horatian, Juvenalian, and Menippean) has created a parallel Ireland that shines a satirical light on its real counterpart. As Freud suggests, humor is a way of accessing aspects of the psyche that normative discourses cannot enunciate, and Howard, through the confessional voice of Ross, offers a fictive truth on 20 years of Irish society, a truth that is not accessed by discourse in the public sphere or by what could be termed literary or high cultural fiction.

Weight: 650g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367645359