Waugh, Evelyn (Vol. 3) - Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
A British novelist and man of letters, Waugh wrote savagely satirical novels until his conversion to Roman Catholicism, after which much of his work had a strong Catholic background. The best known of his earlier novels is The Loved One; of the later novels, the most renowned is Brideshead Revisited.
A Handful of Dust is a major work in the [Waugh] canon. It is the most open of Waugh's books about having a tragic intention (even though it is The Loved One which is subtitled a tragedy), and this makes it Waugh's equivalent to The Flower Beneath the Foot (Vile Bodies being his Pirelli). The characters break the classical rules for tragedy by being in themselves shallow and vulgar-minded. But the essential advantage of the fragmentary method is to put perspectives round the characters beyond their, or conceivably the author's, vision. The irony and poetry echo in, so to speak, the...
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