Oxford University Press, USA
The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H. H. Munro
The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H. H. Munro
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Saki is the acknowledged master of the short story. His writing is elegant, economical, and witty, its tone worldly, flippant irreverence delivered in astringent exchanges and epigrams more neat, pointed, and poised even than Wilde's. The deadpan narrative voice allows for the unsentimental
recitation of horrors and the comically grotesque, and the generation of guilty laughter at some very un-pc statements.
Saki's short stories have been much reprinted as well as adapted for radio, stage, and television, but his novels, The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came, are almost unknown, his journalism and travel writing forgotten, and his plays rarely performed. Sandie Byrne argues that his reputation
has been unfairly overshadowed by his predecessor Oscar Wilde, contemporary George Bernard Shaw, and successors P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. In a well-meaning introduction to the Penguin Complete Saki, Noel Coward reinforced the received image of Saki's work as celebrating an Edwardian or even Victorian milieu of privilege, luxury, and affectation; comedies of manners and light satire. Byrne shows that Saki's writing was no nostalgic
evocation of a lost golden age, and that he was rarely concerned with the charm and delight Coward describes. His preoccupations were with England, the values of Empire, and the dangerous beauty of the feral ephebe. The threat to the first two of these triggered his alleged metamorphosis from
cosmopolitan cynic and dandy-about-town to patriotic, even jingoistic, NCO, in a manner worthy of his blackest humor.
Author: Sandie Byrne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 12/20/2007
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.59h x 6.10w x 1.22d
ISBN: 9780199226054
recitation of horrors and the comically grotesque, and the generation of guilty laughter at some very un-pc statements.
Saki's short stories have been much reprinted as well as adapted for radio, stage, and television, but his novels, The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came, are almost unknown, his journalism and travel writing forgotten, and his plays rarely performed. Sandie Byrne argues that his reputation
has been unfairly overshadowed by his predecessor Oscar Wilde, contemporary George Bernard Shaw, and successors P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. In a well-meaning introduction to the Penguin Complete Saki, Noel Coward reinforced the received image of Saki's work as celebrating an Edwardian or even Victorian milieu of privilege, luxury, and affectation; comedies of manners and light satire. Byrne shows that Saki's writing was no nostalgic
evocation of a lost golden age, and that he was rarely concerned with the charm and delight Coward describes. His preoccupations were with England, the values of Empire, and the dangerous beauty of the feral ephebe. The threat to the first two of these triggered his alleged metamorphosis from
cosmopolitan cynic and dandy-about-town to patriotic, even jingoistic, NCO, in a manner worthy of his blackest humor.
Author: Sandie Byrne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 12/20/2007
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.59h x 6.10w x 1.22d
ISBN: 9780199226054
About the Author
Sandie Byrne was formerly Tutor in English at Balliol College, Oxford, and Professor of English Literature at the University of Lincoln. She is the author of a number of books and articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.
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