Waugh, Evelyn (Vol. 8) - Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
Waugh is a British novelist whose writing can best be divided into pre- and post-Catholicism. Before his conversion in 1945, Waugh's works were humorous social satires. His later works continued to use satire, but in an increasingly cynical and pessimistic vein. (See also CLC, Vols. 1, 3, and Contemporary Authors, obituary, Vols. 25-28, rev. ed.)
Traditionalism—that past elegantly embodied in aristocratic pastoral of great houses, chestnut-tree drives, craftsmanship, hierarchy, culture—establishes the ideal of civilization, order, and permanence; but Waugh's comic act is to violate it with modernity. The novelist of instability, beyond such humanism, he depends on the memento mori, the macabre intrusion, the bleak reminder of the folly of seeking fulfilment inside time or history; the posture consorts elegantly with a modernizing history which, to his comic eye, is devoted to the same riotous and...
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