Canetti and Nietzsche: Theories of Humor in Die Blendung

Overview

This first full-length study investigates the profound implications of the peculiarly original sense of humor found in Elias Canetti's single novel—a facetiousness, understood in a Nietzschean sense, as a revolutionary aesthetic.

Now translated into more than twenty-two languages, Die Blendung, known in its English translation as either The Tower of Babel or Auto-da-Fe, has become something of a popular novel. Canetti and Nietzsche is the first full-length study of Canetti's novel to do justice to the profound implications of its peculiarly original sense of humor, one which typically finds its expression in facetiousness. It understands facetiousness, through Nietzsche, as a performance art—an art that equates truth with the wisdom that life should be about the effort we put into creative acts. Examining both the theory and practice of humor, Murphy relates her own theoretical insights to the international debates concerning the influence of political correctness and the liberal Left inside and outside the universities.