Abstract

Frank Palmeri's Satire in Narrative offers a synchronic and diachronic study of narrative satire by means of an analysis of five texts with problematic generic status: Petronius's Satyricon, Swift's Tale of a Tub, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Melville's Confidence-Man, and Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. In identifying and elaborating a set of generic features and strategies in the book's first chapter, Palmeri attempts to construct a theory of narrative satire that will in subsequent chapters "illuminate the satiric nature of these narratives and … improve our ability to make sense of each" (17). In this effort, he is largely successful.

How to Cite:

Kharpertian, T. D., (1991) “Beating the Binaries”, Pynchon Notes , 151-155. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.265