230587 Satire in 20th Century U.S. Fiction (S) (SoSe 2009)

Class time changed to Tuesday 12-14 because of room availability.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it." Art Buchwald.

Satire has flourished in mass culture and is a staple of literature, visual arts, and the news media. Satire involves the use of techniques such as irony, parody, and burlesque to expose human folly. It is one of the democratic arts par excellence, as it punctures the inflated egos of the powerful and brings them down to size, but it also mocks social trends and caricatures the dreams of the ordinary as much as the visions of the mighty. In this course, we will study the forms of satire in an American social context, primarily through works by Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis and Joseph Heller's seminal novel Catch 22, but we will also look at satire in other literature and the media up to the present day.

Students will receive one point for attendance, one for an oral presentation, and one for an essay.