Comic Mode in English Literature

Murray Roston is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English at Bar Ilan University, Israel and Adjunct Professor at the University of Calfornia, Los Angeles, USA. Across a 40 year publication history, he has written on a wide variety of topics from Medieval to Contemporary literature.

Featured in the Times Higher Education Literature textbook round-up.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Late Medieval; i. The Second Shepherds' Play; ii. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; iii. Medwall, Fulgens and Lucrece; 3. The Renaissance; i. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream; ii. Falstaff; iii. Donne, 'The Flea'; iv. Marvell, 'The Garden'; 4. The Restoration and Eighteenth Century; i. Restoration Comedy; ii. Pope, 'The Rape of the Lock'; iii. The Vogue of Sentiment; iv. Sterne, Tristram Shandy; 5. Nineteenth Century; i. Austen, Emma; ii. Dickens, The Pickwick Papers; iii. Poking Fun at the Establishment; iv. Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest; v. Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat; 6. Twentieth Century; i. George Bernard Shaw; ii. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm; iii. Beckett, Waiting for Godot; iv. Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim; v. Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man; vi. Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary; Bibliography; Index.