Laughter and ressentiment: Marcel Proust, Jean Rhys and Philip Roth

This dissertation explores the importance of ressentiment humor in twentieth century narrative. Through analysis of humor inspired by ressentiment, I examine its impact in Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu, Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight and Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. I start by identifying a particular type of comedy, articulated through a state of anger and frustration first identified by Friedrich Nietzsche as ressentiment. I examine specific social and cultural determinants for the comic to show the effect of political, racial, class and gender differences on the production of ressentiment humor, and discuss why this form of comedy has not always been appreciated.;In my first chapter, I trace the origin of modern ressentiment comedy in Marcel Proust's work, where a member of the bourgeoisie, fascinated by aristocracy and captivated by love, substitutes the elitism and intensity of art for both. I show how an example of humorous triumph over anger in Proust reveals the narrator's ressentiment and significantly qualifies the aesthetic triumph at the end of the Recherche.;My second chapter continues with a discussion of Jean Rhys. I use her work to raise the question as to why women have so often been perceived as lacking a sense of humor. I show how Rhys's complaints through ressentiment humor trade on this difficulty in order to achieve the paradoxical goal of a revenge that succeeds in establishing the superiority of its perpetrator only when its humor is not recognized. I discuss the "impossible" position of the funny woman and explore why the comedy of Jean Rhys, when noticed by critics, has been treated as peripheral to her work.;My third chapter on Philip Roth investigates the status of the genuine and its relation to fiction through the monologue of the clamorous hero of Portnoy's Complaint. I argue that the ressentiment humor in Philip Roth's work is founded on conflicts between different value systems serving to establish identity. I examine how the disjunction between ideals in Jewish and Protestant-American culture creates a contradictory ego ideal for Alex Portnoy and illustrate how humor serves to represent this oscillation of values.