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Don L. F. Nilsen. Humor in Irish Literature. Westport: Greenwood, 1996. Pp. xx + 225. $65.
The funniest thing about this book is its thesis, namely, that there is an incomparable kind of humor observable in the Irish literary tradition, one which can be best explained by the Irish character as shaped by Ireland's tragic history. According to this pseudoscientific perspective on cause and effect in literary history, Irish humor is an ingenious kind of stoicism by which pain and suffering can be transmuted into their contrary forms, joy and laughter. History explains the character, the character explains the humor, and the humor reveals the essential paradox at the heart of the whole process. This extremely dated kind of deterministic account of the Irish national character has a lively critical history, some of which is acknowledged here, but the invention of "the stage Irishman," for example, or the stereotype of the Irish as incurably charming talkers with "the gift of the gab," remain unchallenged articles of superstitious...