"Waiting for Waiting for Godot" (2016) is a biographical and award-winning two-act play, a parody of Beckett's seminal work "Waiting for Godot" (1953). It is one of the most renowned works of the newgeneration American playwrights by actor and comedian Dave C. Hanson, who is relatively unknown to scholars. Having used the text…

While conventional critics seek the comic aspect of parody, modernist critics credit parody with questioning mainstream literary trends and subverting literary production. For instance, Mikhail Bakhtin believes in parody's power to create "a decrowning double" by turning the official worldview up-side-down. For experimental poets like…

Parody and related forms of political humor are essential resources for sustaining democratic public culture. They do so by exposing the limits of public speech, transforming discursive demands into virtual images, setting those images before a carnivalesque audience, and celebrating social leveling while decentering all discourses within the…

Suggests the use of parody to deepen students' understanding of how and why poems work. (TJ)

A facetious private detective story embroidered with literary interpretation, autobiography, logical positivism, David Hume on personal identity, and "The Happy Hooker." (RL)

When assigned to do parodies of literary works, students explore a variety of legitimate parodic relationships of significant critical interest. (DD)

Describes and presents examples of work from the Western Michigan school of bad versemakers, a group of nineteenth century poets who strove to give their frontier experiences high seriousness, but achieved, at best, unintentional humor. (MM)

This study presents the third of four reports of the 1970-71 National Assessment of Literature. The educational attainments of nine-year-olds, thirteen-year-olds, seventeen-year-olds, and adults (ages 26-35) were surveyed according to their ability to recognize literary works and characters. Five types of exercises were used: (1) an illustration…

Miguel de Cervantes' capture by the Turks and his imprisonment in Argel (Morocco) during the Battle of Lepanto in the sixteenth century have been studied by literary critics who have endeavored to determine fiction and reality in certain episodes of "Don Quijote" and in the drama, "Los banos de Argel". Twelve documents…

This book is a collection of Frost's letters, reviews, introductions, lectures, and interviews on writing dating back to 1913. It provides Frost's view of literature, and its relation to language and social order. Part one, "Frost as a Literary Critic," discusses the scope of Frost's criticism and Frost as both critical theorist and…