Satire as the Comic Public Sphere

“Those engaged in research and thinking on ‘the comic’ will find this book a valuable aid.”

—J. C. Jaffe Choice

“Should endure as an important, discerning account of the paradoxical nature of satire, especially in our postmodern media environment.”

—Brian P. O’Sullivan Studies in American Humor

“The book is masterful at bringing together a wide range of thinkers and using their insights to construct an account of satire that allows us to see its new roles and, as Bill Maher might put it, its new rules.”

—Steven Gimbel Philosophy of Humor Yearbook

“Any scholar or student interested in the roles of comic and satiric discourse in twenty-first-century culture will benefit from reading this book. In my own engagements with satire, I will turn to this book first as an authoritative sorting-out of where we are and where we are going.”

—Bruce Michelson, author of Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self

James E. Caron is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. He is the author of Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter and coeditor of Refocusing Chaplin: A Screen Icon Through Critical Lenses and Sut Lovingood’s Nat’ral Born Yarnspinner: Essays on George Washington Harris.