Trolling began long before the internet. This accessible history traces the ancestry of its textual and rhetorical strategies, by looking at literature from ancient Greece to the 1980s.
Trolling is the most controversial genre of writing to have risen to prominence in the 21st century, with far-reaching consequences for its writers and readers alike. But it is too often regarded as a technological problem, confined to the internet. This book takes a very different approach: it regards trolling as a cultural problem with a long and venerable literary history.
Taking in the contrarianism of Lord Byron, the wit of Oscar Wilde, insult trading in Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift's disaster trolling, Martin Luther's dissemination of heresy through a public discussion forum, the grotesquely misogynistic abuse hurled in Archilochus's poetry, the taunting provocations of avant-garde manifestos, and not forgetting public humiliations in Beowulf, David Rudrum demonstrates that trolls' rhetorical shenanigans are neither new nor unvanquishable.
Papildus informācija
Traces the literary and rhetorical ancestry of trolling.
Acknowledgements
Prefatory note on content
Introduction:
Trolling in/and/as Literature
Chapter One: Trolling is
Trolling and its definitions: What we (dont) know so far
Chapter Two: to defame, insult, or humiliate an opponent in public
From flyting to flaming; from Beowulf to Shakespeare
Chapter Three: or to make a public statement
Trolling the Pope: Martin Luther Goes Viral
Chapter Four: of views that are not sincerely held
U Can Has Babeez! Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal
Chapter Five: but instead aim to court controversy
Oscar Wilde as a contrarian troll, or, How to put the wit into Twitter
Chapter Six: or to be provocative or vexatious
A Slap in the Face of Public Taste: some avant-garde trolls
Chapter Seven: sometimes with legal consequences.
Social justice trolling: Émile Zolas JAccuse!
Conclusions
Index
David Rudrum is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is the author or editor of four previous publications, including Supplanting the Postmodern (co-edited with Nicholas Stavris, Bloomsbury, 2015) and Stanley Cavell and the Claim of Literature (2013).
