TY - JOUR
T1 - Grey Humour: The Comedy of Tedium in Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio’s El Jarama (1955)
AU - Hilborn, Matthew
N1 - Funding Information:
Research for this article was undertaken as part of a doctorate funded by an AHRC-Northern Bridge studentship at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/2/14
Y1 - 2022/2/14
N2 - This article presents an innovative reading of humour within the classic Spanish postwar novel, El Jarama by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (1955), typically deemed dispassionate, solemn, and deadly serious. Grounding its interpretation in Humour Studies, it explores undercurrents of desolate, almost deliberately non-funny amusement that encourage stifled laughter from bleak situations, before immediately questioning the veracity and appropriateness of mirthful reactions. It coins new ways of understanding bathetic, grim comedy, based on situations usually interpreted as being mirthless: sluggish ‘grey humour’, originating fundamentally, and paradoxically, in boredom; ‘comic-kazi’, a backfiring, debilitating, anti-comic funniness; and ‘hardship humour’, amusement based on privation.
AB - This article presents an innovative reading of humour within the classic Spanish postwar novel, El Jarama by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (1955), typically deemed dispassionate, solemn, and deadly serious. Grounding its interpretation in Humour Studies, it explores undercurrents of desolate, almost deliberately non-funny amusement that encourage stifled laughter from bleak situations, before immediately questioning the veracity and appropriateness of mirthful reactions. It coins new ways of understanding bathetic, grim comedy, based on situations usually interpreted as being mirthless: sluggish ‘grey humour’, originating fundamentally, and paradoxically, in boredom; ‘comic-kazi’, a backfiring, debilitating, anti-comic funniness; and ‘hardship humour’, amusement based on privation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124482102&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2021.2020004
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2021.2020004
M3 - Article
SN - 1475-3820
VL - 99
SP - 81
EP - 111
JO - BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES
JF - BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES
IS - 1
ER -