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Trolling Before the Internet: An Offline History of Insult, Provocation, and Public Humiliation in the Literary Classics

AUTHOR Rudrum, David
PUBLISHER Bloomsbury Academic (11/14/2024)
PRODUCT TYPE Hardcover (Hardcover)

Description
Trolling began long before the internet. This accessible history traces the ancestry of its textual and rhetorical strategies, by looking at literature from ancient Greece to the 1980s.

Trolling is the most controversial genre of writing to have risen to prominence in the 21st century, with far-reaching consequences for its writers and readers alike. But it is too often regarded as a technological problem, confined to the internet. This book takes a very different approach: it regards trolling as a cultural problem with a long and venerable literary history.

Taking in the contrarianism of Lord Byron, the wit of Oscar Wilde, insult trading in Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift's disaster trolling, Martin Luther's dissemination of heresy through a public discussion forum, the grotesquely misogynistic abuse hurled in Archilochus's poetry, the taunting provocations of avant-garde manifestos, and not forgetting public humiliations in Beowulf, David Rudrum demonstrates that trolls' rhetorical shenanigans are neither new nor unvanquishable.
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Product Format
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781501391521
ISBN-10: 1501391526
Binding: Hardback or Cased Book (Sewn)
Content Language: English
More Product Details
Page Count: 320
Carton Quantity: 22
Product Dimensions: 6.00 x 0.75 x 9.00 inches
Weight: 1.31 pound(s)
Feature Codes: Bibliography, Index, Dust Cover
Country of Origin: US
Subject Information
BISAC Categories
Literary Criticism | Comparative Literature
Literary Criticism | Media Studies
Literary Criticism | Rhetoric
Dewey Decimal: 809.91
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024013963
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
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Trolling began long before the internet. This accessible history traces the ancestry of its textual and rhetorical strategies, by looking at literature from ancient Greece to the 1980s.

Trolling is the most controversial genre of writing to have risen to prominence in the 21st century, with far-reaching consequences for its writers and readers alike. But it is too often regarded as a technological problem, confined to the internet. This book takes a very different approach: it regards trolling as a cultural problem with a long and venerable literary history.

Taking in the contrarianism of Lord Byron, the wit of Oscar Wilde, insult trading in Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift's disaster trolling, Martin Luther's dissemination of heresy through a public discussion forum, the grotesquely misogynistic abuse hurled in Archilochus's poetry, the taunting provocations of avant-garde manifestos, and not forgetting public humiliations in Beowulf, David Rudrum demonstrates that trolls' rhetorical shenanigans are neither new nor unvanquishable.
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List Price $90.00
Your Price  $89.10
Hardcover