Study of the Comic Technique of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, and Flannery O'Connor

FAIN: FB-11237-72

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
Julia Bader (Project Director: September 1972 to present)

Proposed study to examine the functions and techniques of comedy in American literature, with special reference to Mark Twain, Faulkner, Stein, and O'Connor. The potential significance of such a study for matters of national concern would lie in the light it would shed on the nature and effectiveness of characteristically American modes of expression. Would illuminate not only the comic practice of four major writers, but would also place these writers within the context of national problems of belief--social, moral, and religious--manifested in their writing.