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.
By:
David Rudrum
Imprint: Bloomsbury
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 228mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 22mm
Weight: 460g
ISBN: 9781501391538
ISBN 10: 1501391534
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 12 December 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements Prefatory note on content Introduction: Trolling in/and/as Literature Chapter One: Trolling is … Trolling and its definitions: What we (don’t) 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 Swift’s 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 Zola’s J’Accuse…! 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).
