Abstract
Studies of Anglophone comedic fiction writing on the Second World War invariably concentrate on literary depictions of the war in Europe. In this article, I recover a neglected New Zealand novel that instead takes the war in the Pacific as its setting. Though it was not marketed as a comedic work, Errol Brathwaite’s An Affair of Men (1961) intentionally crosses boundaries of style and genre in ways that render its principal character, a Japanese Captain in the Imperial Marines, increasingly buffoonish. I argue that Brathwaite’s language, scenarios, and depictions were intended to confirm a perspective on enemy psychology that remained common throughout the Anglophone world well after the cessation of hostilities.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contributions
- Stylised Configurations of Trauma: Faking Identity in Holocaust Memoirs
- “A Wondrous Lesson in thy Silent Face”: Keats, Darwin, and the Geological Sublime
- Tracing the Other in the Theatre of the Precarious (Lola Arias, Elfriede Jelinek, Meg Stuart, Wajdi Mouawad, Christoph Marthaler)
- Said on Auerbach: Hospitality, or How the Western Canon transformed into Weltliteratur
- Stillschweigen in der Interzone
- Imago Mundi: The Ex-centric Worlds of Franz Gsellmann and Gerhard Roth
- Die getöteten Kinder und die Ästhetik des Bösen
- Enter the Japanese Imperial Marine: Postwar Comedy and Errol Brathwaite’s An Affair of Men
- Transmuting Performance: Esotericism and Metatheatre in Tennessee Williams’s The Two-Character Play
- Reviews
- Francesca Bravi: La Forma del Sogno. La rappresentazione del sogno in romanzi tedeschi e francesi degli anni ’70 tra filologia e fisiologia. Die Form des Traums. Die Traumdarstellung in deutschen und französischen Romanen der 70er Jahre zwischen Philologie und Physiologie. München: Martin Meidenbauer 2011. 172 Seiten. 31,90 €. ISBN: 978-3-89975-260-1.
- Heinrich Detering: Das offene Geheimnis. Zur literarischen Produktivität eines Tabus von Winckelmann bis zu Thomas Mann. Durchgesehene und mit einer Nachbemerkung versehene Studienausgabe. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2013, Zweite Auflage, 432 Seiten.
- Theo d’Haen; David Damrosch; Djelal Kadir (Hgg.):The Routledge Companion to World Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012; Theo d’Haen:The Routledge Concise History of World Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012; Theo d’Haen; César Dominguez; Mads Rosendahl Thomson (Hgg.): World Literature. A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2013.
- Hg. von Monika Schmitz-Emans, Kai Lars Fischer und Christoph Benjamin Schulz,Alphabet, Lexikographik und Enzyklopädistik. Historische Konzepte und literarisch-künstlerische Verfahren. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms 2012.
- Marta Fernández Bueno, Miriam Llamas Ubieto & Paloma Sánchez Hernández (Hrsg./Eds.).Rückblicke und neue Perspektiven – Miradas Retrospectivas y Nuevas Orientaciones. Bern etc: Peter Lang 2013, 731 pp.
- Harst, Joachim:Heilstheater. Figur des barocken Trauerspiels zwischen Gryphius und Kleist. München: Wilhelm Fink 2012. 216 S.
- Emily Apter:Against World Literature. On the Politics of Untranslatability. London, New York: Verso 2013
- David Suchoff.Kafka’s Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Contributions
- Stylised Configurations of Trauma: Faking Identity in Holocaust Memoirs
- “A Wondrous Lesson in thy Silent Face”: Keats, Darwin, and the Geological Sublime
- Tracing the Other in the Theatre of the Precarious (Lola Arias, Elfriede Jelinek, Meg Stuart, Wajdi Mouawad, Christoph Marthaler)
- Said on Auerbach: Hospitality, or How the Western Canon transformed into Weltliteratur
- Stillschweigen in der Interzone
- Imago Mundi: The Ex-centric Worlds of Franz Gsellmann and Gerhard Roth
- Die getöteten Kinder und die Ästhetik des Bösen
- Enter the Japanese Imperial Marine: Postwar Comedy and Errol Brathwaite’s An Affair of Men
- Transmuting Performance: Esotericism and Metatheatre in Tennessee Williams’s The Two-Character Play
- Reviews
- Francesca Bravi: La Forma del Sogno. La rappresentazione del sogno in romanzi tedeschi e francesi degli anni ’70 tra filologia e fisiologia. Die Form des Traums. Die Traumdarstellung in deutschen und französischen Romanen der 70er Jahre zwischen Philologie und Physiologie. München: Martin Meidenbauer 2011. 172 Seiten. 31,90 €. ISBN: 978-3-89975-260-1.
- Heinrich Detering: Das offene Geheimnis. Zur literarischen Produktivität eines Tabus von Winckelmann bis zu Thomas Mann. Durchgesehene und mit einer Nachbemerkung versehene Studienausgabe. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2013, Zweite Auflage, 432 Seiten.
- Theo d’Haen; David Damrosch; Djelal Kadir (Hgg.):The Routledge Companion to World Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012; Theo d’Haen:The Routledge Concise History of World Literature. New York: Routledge, 2012; Theo d’Haen; César Dominguez; Mads Rosendahl Thomson (Hgg.): World Literature. A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2013.
- Hg. von Monika Schmitz-Emans, Kai Lars Fischer und Christoph Benjamin Schulz,Alphabet, Lexikographik und Enzyklopädistik. Historische Konzepte und literarisch-künstlerische Verfahren. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Olms 2012.
- Marta Fernández Bueno, Miriam Llamas Ubieto & Paloma Sánchez Hernández (Hrsg./Eds.).Rückblicke und neue Perspektiven – Miradas Retrospectivas y Nuevas Orientaciones. Bern etc: Peter Lang 2013, 731 pp.
- Harst, Joachim:Heilstheater. Figur des barocken Trauerspiels zwischen Gryphius und Kleist. München: Wilhelm Fink 2012. 216 S.
- Emily Apter:Against World Literature. On the Politics of Untranslatability. London, New York: Verso 2013
- David Suchoff.Kafka’s Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.