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Article: Laughter in Zamiatin's we: passageways into the irrational.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Extrapolation
- Article date:
- June 22, 2002
- Author:
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* Zamiatin provides a critique of totalitarianism in his groundbreaking science fiction novel We (1920), which has been called "the most significant anti-utopian novel of the century" (Kern 9). We was a crucial influence on later landmarks of anti-utopian science-fiction, including Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). Contributing to the already extensive scholarship on Zamiatin's novel, (1) this paper provides a reading of We which emphasizes the semiotics of laughter, a central issue, yet one which has not previously received sufficient attention.
While this paper will focus on laughter as it effects the characters of ...