Thesis--Bonn. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 430-438).

Th. Etat--Etudes germaniques--Strasbourg, 1989. / Bibliogr. p. 340-360. Index.

This dissertation examines how the comic grotesque is used to address the subject of war in selected prose. The Introduction reviews the essential ludicrous-fearful duality of the grotesque. "Comic Grotesque" refers to examples which emphasize the ludicrous. An organic link exists between the nature of war and the grotesque form. Part One deals with Renaissance selections. The first is the slaughter of the rebels in Sidney's Arcadia, which parodies epic-battle motifs. The princes dispatch the rebels in a series of gruesome and humorous portraits. Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller contains two grotesque battles. Jack wants to join the stronger side at the Marignano blood bath but soon flies off to the Munster uprising. Jack's grotesque similes and Rabelaisian vitality characterize him as a picaresque hero. Burton's tirade against war in The Anatomy of Melanchols exposes all the absurdities of war but with comic exaggeration. The tirade is part of the greater dilemma of not knowing whether to laugh with Democritus or cry with Heraclitus. To understand Burton's paradoxical view of war, the tirade must be seen within the context of the entire Anatomy. Part Two looks at eighteenth-century selections. The pettiness and horror of war are recurrent themes in Gulliver's Travels. Swift is particularly interested in the unreason of war engines and the perverse delight which men take in the spectacle of battle. Smollett's Roderick Random documents the military experiences of another picaresque hero who sees action in the War of Jenkins's Ear and the battle of Dettingen. Like Jack Wilton, Roderick only enlists in the army to support himself. Perhaps the most memorable comic grotesque statement on war comes in Sterne's Tristram Shandy. The bowling green diversion may be harmless play, but it is also tied to Marlborough's actual campaigns. Paradoxically, uncle Toby's war wound is an emblem of love. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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The style and themes central to Bukowski's prose have roots in the literary tradition of the grotesque. Bukowski uses grotesque imagery in his writings as a creative device, explaining the negative characteristics of modern life. His permanent mood of angry disgust at the world around him is similar to that of the eighteenth-century satirists, particularly Jonathan Swift. Bukowski confronts the reader with the uglier side of America--its grime, its corruption, the constricted lives of its lower class--all with a simplicity and directness of style impeccably and clearly distilled. Bukowski's style is ebullient, with grotesquely evocative descriptions, scatological detail, and dark humor.

After a general historical outline of the term and concept 'grotesque' attention is focused on the grotesque in Southern fiction and an attempt is made to explain the abundance of this mode in the literature of the South. It can seemingly be linked to the distinctiveness of that region as compared to the rest of the United States—a distinctiveness that has been brought about by historical, geographical, sociological and economic factors.Basing the discussion on the theory of Philip Thomson, who defines the grotesque as "the unresolved clash between incompatibles in work and response," various critical approaches to the Southern grotesque are examined, all of which are found to be too all-embracing. An effort is then made to analyse the grotesque as displayed particularly in Caldwell, Capote, Faulkner, Goyen, McCullers, O'Connor and Welty. The study deals first with the macabre-grotesque, then the repulsive/frighten-ing-grotesque and finally the comic-grotesque. The last chapter is devoted to more recent authors writing in the 1960s. Their works reveal that the South is still a breeding ground for the grotesque. / digitalisering@umu

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In the narrative painting series Discount Meat, I employ grotesque realism to emphasize the rupture of corporeal and social boundaries, reframing the body as a site of discontinuity whose physical and perceptual structures are in constant flux. Through this approach, I synthesize fragments of lived and observed experience into invented narratives with an emphasis on embodiment. By emphasizing the apertures connecting the body’s interior with the outside world, I seek to problematize the image of a discrete self, suggesting instability as a central element of physical identity. Across this web of disjointed narratives, I strive to portray the emotional range and complexity of human experience in terms of vivid physicality, depicting tedium and pain while allowing space in the work for levity and imagination.

In Tulpamancy Groom explores themes of gender, girlhood, and the grotesque in a collection of poems that confront our stereotypical assumptions about what it means to be feminine. Lyrical and disturbing, the poems in Tulpamancy use language in a highly associative manner to dismantle our preconceived notions about women, the muse, and the relationship between the two.

Hyperbole has a varied and contentious history, and its forms and functions are largely ignored and dismissed today. Often misunderstood, hyperbole nevertheless offers critical insights into our understandings of epistemology and ontology that cannot go unexplored. In order to recover and reinvigorate a theory of hyperbole within the field of rhetorical theory and criticism, I explore the history of this critical trope from ancient to modern times. I then offer two functions and one meta-function of hyperbole based on this historical survey: moving through impossibility towards possibility, asserting a lie on the side of truth(s), and re-orienting one’s perspective through disorientation. Derived from a historical survey of hyperbole, these two functions and one meta-function are vital for understanding and constructing a theory of hyperbole that is productive and useful for current theoretical discussion. Using these functions, I offer a variety of examples under the purview of the epideictic and grotesque genres and show how hyperbole might be employed within rhetorical theory and criticism. Overall, this project seeks to respond to the gap that exists within current rhetorical theory regarding hyperbole, to explore why hyperbole is often dismissed as a tropological expression of excess and exaggeration, and to revitalize interest in hyperbole for critical use in areas such as rhetoric, theology, and philosophy.