Alfred Jarry | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 24 pages of analysis & critique of Alfred Jarry.

Alfred Jarry | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 24 pages of analysis & critique of Alfred Jarry.
This section contains 6,828 words
(approx. 23 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp

SOURCE: Knapp, Bettina L. “Jarry's The Supermale: The Sex Machine, the Food Machine and the Bicycle Race: Is it a Question of Adaptation?” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 18, nos. 3-4 (spring-summer 1990): 492-507.

In the following essay, Knapp provides a close reading of Jarry's The Supermale, with particular focus on the frequent elision of mechanization, competition, and fornication. The author analyzes Jarry's use of caricature and humor, and places Jarry's concerns about mechanization and masculinity in the context of turn-of-the-century anxieties.

Alfred Jarry's farcical and fantastic novel The Supermale (1900) focuses upon a sex machine, a food machine, and bicycles that outdo a speeding train. Satiric in intent, the novel uses these as metaphoric devices to further energize Jarry's already super-virile and priapic protagonist. “To survive,” the author noted, “man must become stronger than the machine, as happened when he gained dominion over wild beasts … It is simply a question of adapting...

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This section contains 6,828 words
(approx. 23 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp
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Critical Essay by Bettina L. Knapp from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.