The 21st Century Comedy of 'White Teeth'

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,7, University of Bremen (English-Speaking Cultures), course: The Transnational Novel , language: English, abstract: The 21st Century Comedy of White Teeth

Contents

1. Polyglot Plot

1.1. Flexible omniscient narrator

1.2. Forwarded Reversals

2. Transnational Locations

2.1. Colours of Culture

2.2. Irish Storytelling

2.3. Transcultural Veto

3. Comedy

3.1. Generic Gear

3.2. Comedic Crossings

3.2.1. Mad Mary

3.2.2. Arabian Mickey

3.2.3. Samad & Women

3.3. Male Mockery

3.3.1. Anti-hero Archie

3.3.2. Protagonist Samad

3.3.3. Old School

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

"It is useless to base any system on a human being." (Henri Bergson. Laughter. 1900)

White Teeth is both an ample and intense read as well as a bestselling success after its first publication in 2000. It has found its creative way via television adaptation and a four-hour

long theatre play into the school curriculum. In my term paper I will show that White Teeth is a comedy for the 21st century generated through a polyglot plot and transnational locations.

Mostly based on the first half of the novel, it is where I could draw up my hypotheses. Archibald Jones¿ and Samad Iqbal¿s male friendship is affiliated with society and culture, and therefore useful on reflexion. Their synchronized mid-life crises move towards conflicts exposed in the amusing narrative. Critically user-oriented but limited due to paper-size, I will try to converge to the multilateral scope of new fiction.

While researching secondary literature published in the 2000s about postcolonial and transnational corpora many authors claimed superordinate terminology adhered to Zadie Smith¿s début novel White Teeth. Nonetheless, serious analytical debates were missing an

essential genre making literature enjoyable more than ever. In this term paper, my aim is to prove that Zadie Smith escaped the compelling hassle of both a début and millennium novel by jocular updating of contemporary English-speaking literature.

1. Polyglot Plot

The promising twenty-something writer, the English-Jamaican Zadie Smith, was supported by her husband and laywer come poet, the Northern Irish Nick Laird, who published her poetry before her literary fame. She graduated in English literature at Cambridge university with her epic début White Teeth that became a sensational best-seller, TV adaptation and theatre play.

Creative writing about deprived war veterans and their respective multicultural families is syncopated by boisterous jokes. I will elucidate the transnational comedy that is about to unfold in a 542-paged volume.

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