Tragicomic Historiography in Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog
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Gerd Bayer
Abstract
Good fiction relies to a large extent on an appropriate relationship between style and content. A narrative's story and its treatment should support each other, lest the effect of the work of art be confusing to the reader and hence a failed effort to create an aesthetic version of reality. A novel that attempts to retell the tragic history of a violent revolution and at the same time tries to entertain the reader with a wealth of comic elements is facing a tough challenge, a challenge that Tibor Fischer takes on in Under the Frog. This essay deals with how Fischer combines what might seem to be mutually exclusive attitudes; the argument also examines the author's idiosyncratic comic technique. A close reading of Under the Frog shows that while the story supplies the tragic element, the novel's comic style provides the contrast and counterweight to the seriousness of its topic.
© Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2005
Articles in the same Issue
- Vorbemerkung
- Minimal Art: On the Intermedial Aesthetic Context of Samuel Beckett's Late Theatre and Drama
- Literaturgeschichtliche Interventionen: Nationalistische Funktionalisierungen der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung am Beispiel des englischen und französischen Diskurses über ‘Klassizismus’ und ‘Romantik’
- The Poet and the Hack: Goldsmith's Career as a Professional Writer
- Tragicomic Historiography in Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog
- Miszellen
- Besprechungen
- Eingegangene Schriften
Articles in the same Issue
- Vorbemerkung
- Minimal Art: On the Intermedial Aesthetic Context of Samuel Beckett's Late Theatre and Drama
- Literaturgeschichtliche Interventionen: Nationalistische Funktionalisierungen der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung am Beispiel des englischen und französischen Diskurses über ‘Klassizismus’ und ‘Romantik’
- The Poet and the Hack: Goldsmith's Career as a Professional Writer
- Tragicomic Historiography in Tibor Fischer's Under the Frog
- Miszellen
- Besprechungen
- Eingegangene Schriften
