Muriel Spark's detached, and often dark, sense of humour has brought her prolific body of work both popular and critical acclaim. However, some critics lament that she treats the events and characters of her novels too lightly; that her deliberately cultivated sense of distance prevents her works from dealing with truly important issues. This thesis argues that Spark's sense of purpose lies within her comic and satirical tone, as opposed to existing in spite of it.
In her interviews and speeches, Spark reveals a preoccupation with the idea of ridicule as a method of confronting evil. Her 1971 speech, "The Desegregation of Art," states that "Ridicule is the only honourable weapon we have left" (35), and urges her audience to abandon more sentimental styles of art in favour of satire. To Spark, self-knowledge is tied to a sense of the absurd, and it is the writer who must both recognize the ridiculous and share that recognition with her audience, all the while delivering pleasure and entertainment.
Spark's detached writing style provides a necessary distance for seeing absurdity and avoiding sentimentality. Spark's attitude of detached ridicule mirrors Henri Bergson's social theory, where ridicule is seen as a disciplinary element and becomes a crucial tool for social control. She employs ridicule on two separate and distinct levels: an authorial level, in which she chooses the content she will expose to mockery, and a level within the narrative, where characters use ridicule and laughter to influence events. In The Ballad of Peckham Rye [1960], The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [1960] and The Abbess of Crewe [1974], Spark's powerful characters are those who wield and control satirical insight, an insight which usually accompanies the role of "writer," as they act against oppressive, and often fascist, authority.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/28228 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Conlon, Rachel |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 94 p. |
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