Evelyn Waugh’s Satire

Evelyn Waugh (1903ΓÇô1966) is one of the twentieth centuryΓÇÖs great prose stylists and the author of a suite of devastating satires on modern English life, from his first unforgettably funny novel Decline and Fall, to his last work of fiction, ΓÇ£Basil Seal Rides Again.ΓÇ¥ Evelyn WaughΓÇÖs Satire: Texts and Contexts renews scholarly debates central to WaughΓÇÖs work: the forms of his satire, his attitudes towards modernity and modernism, his place in the literary culture of the interwar period, and his pugnacious (mis)reading of literary and other texts. This study offers new exegetical accounts of the forms and figures of WaughΓÇÖs satire, linking original readings of WaughΓÇÖs texts to the literary-historical contexts that informed them. Posing fresh readings of familiar works and affording attention to more neglected texts, Evelyn WaughΓÇÖs Satire: Texts and Contexts offers readers and scholars a timely opportunity to return to the rich, dark art of this master of prose satire.