The Comedy of Language: Studies in Modern Comic Literature by Fred Miller Robinson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS71 proven, but it is interesting. One of the best things about the book is that it is not formidable. It could easily be read and studied in a semester. ALLEEN PACE NILSEN, Arizona State University Fred Miller Robinson. The Comedy of Language: Studies in Modern Comic Literature . Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980. 189 p. Robinson establishes two goals for his book: to contribute to the general theory of comedy and to apply the theory to the comedies of language which he feels are the quintessence of the modern comic vision. He begins his argument by describing the limitations of social theories of comedy to adequately interpret many twentiethcentury comic works. He argues, for example, that Bergson's theory of comedy, which holds that the purpose of comedy is to restore the "abnormal" person to the fold of the socially normative, is inadequate to interpret the comic nature of texts like Beckett's Watt or Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. It fails because it locates the comic within the quotidian and therefore cannot illuminate a comedy in which the comic vision rests in a conflict between the perception of the real and the ideal. He then maintains that Bergson could have applied his theory of metaphysics (An Introduction to Metaphysics) to comedy, an application which would have addressed the issues raised by those modern works of comedy whose authors achieve their comedy from a preoccupation with the problem of how to use language "to describe a reality beyond description," the reality of the élan vital. Robinson proceeds to describe what he calls the predominately twentieth-century genre, the comedy of language. The result is a definition ofmetaphysical comedy: "comedy that has epistemological, ontological, theological, or philosophical dimensions." Any work of such an ambitious scope invites problems; Robinson's is no exception . As his title indicates, his interest lies in the relationship between comedy and language, in the comic paradox possible in the conflict between language and reality. Nevertheless, his definition of metaphysical comedy also includes those twentiethcentury comic works whose concerns, although metaphysical, are not directly with the comic possibilities of language. Indeed, even within the chapters in which he applies his theory, Robinson occasionally muddles the distinction between metaphysical comedy and the metaphysical comedy of language. One wishes that he had considered the comedy of language as one category of a more inclusive genre of metaphysical comedy. Another problem, sure to create controversy, is his selection ofAs I Lay Dying as an example of a work of comic vision. It is much easier to accept that the novel is metaphysical, and that it has comic moments, than to accept it as a metaphysical comedy. In this case and others, Robinson's definition of comic vision appears dangerously close to that of mythic vision. Despite these qualifications, his book makes a valuable contribution to the theory of modern comedy. His logic and prose are clear and persuasive. The philosophic foundation of his theory is extensive and carefully chosen. His applications of the theory show the same careful research and awareness of pertinent criticism. More important, his analyses of Joyce's Ulysseys, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Stevens 's poetry, and Beckett's Watt show his theory to be an efficacious method of critical interpretation. MICHAEL VIVION Southwest Texas State University ...