Abstract

The first half of this dissertation deals with the work of the neo-gnostic theologian, author, and painter Pierre Klossowski. I treat his work chronologically, elucidating the route his work has taken. Although many studies of Klossowski's work exist, treating him within the post-structuralist movement as a friend of Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Lacan; or as a disciple of Andre Gide, I trace the arc of his overall philosophical evolution. Basically, Klossowski moves from a vertical to a horizontal economy; from a Gnostic economy of the spirit, to a Fourierist economy of voluptuous emotion; from a distressed and anguished spiritual view to that of worldly comedy. In tracing his long and arduously circuitous progression, I necessarily proceed pointillistically, offering slices of the religious and philosophical contexts necessary for understanding his work, while always placing his ideas within the larger frameworks of artistic and psychiatric controversies to show why Klossowski's contributions are central to the postmodern debate. ;In confronting the Platonic heritage, and in changing from a vertical to a horizontal economy, Klossowski leads directly into the world of comedy, which forms the second half of my dissertation. Comedy has always sought to deal with horizontal relations, in bypassing the relations long mandated between God and his creatures. It is for this reason that comedy has for so long been suppressed. In my last four chapters I sketch out the work of Edward Lear, the minor surrealist Philippe Soupault in relation to Andre Breton, the Beat poet Gregory Corso, and the English light-comedy novelist P. G. Wodehouse. All of these "laughable" writers have been neglected in the critical tradition, precisely because they are the most potent antidote to the poisonous philosophy bequeathed by the dominant Platonic heritage