Decline and Fall | Techniques

Decline and Fall Techniques

Decline and Fall makes brilliant use of two literary techniques that invert one's conventional responses to the ebb and flow of life's occurrences. The first describes the most outrageous and unlikely events in the deadpan tones of a newspaper reporter and leaves the reader to imagine just how bizarre things actually were. The second takes a stock situation, such as a plea for mercy or a meditation upon the death of a friend, and presents it in the form of a purple-prose parody of some monument of English literature: Shakespeare's Othello (c.1604) and Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean (1885) in the examples referred to here, and a host of other targets throughout the remainder of the book. Both techniques require great sureness of touch if they are to be brought off successfully, and it is a measure of Waugh's outstanding technical competence that readers eagerly accept these daring forays against...
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