What Not: A Prophetic Comedy

Dame Rose MacaulayProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 324K words
Chapters: 33

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.What Not: A Prophetic Comedy by Rose MacaulayAuthor: Macaulay, Rose, 1881-1958,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 7, 2011

Editor's review

Rose Macaulay was a twentieth-century British novelist. What Not: A Prophetic Comedy, with its subtitle "A Prophetic Comedy," carries clear satirical and speculative overtones. Through a comic framework, the work imagines changes in social institutions and daily life, using exaggeration and irony to present people's fixation on order, efficiency and moral norms. Macaulay's tone is witty and her dialogue dense; she skillfully embeds observations on bureaucratic habits and social manners within a light narrative, often prompting a knowing smile. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, it preserves the syntax and humorous rhythm of early twentieth-century English prose, suited to readers interested in British satirical literature and early speculative fiction. The reading focus is not on spectacular plot but on how the author uses comic setups to test social assumptions: which "progress" is worth welcoming, and which is merely control in a new guise. Of moderate length, it works as supplementary reading beyond English literature courses and for readers who enjoy dry humor and institutional satire in a quiet setting.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy British satirical comedy and dry humor
Those interested in early speculative fiction and social allegory
Readers who want to expand their reading of twentieth-century British women writers
Literature fans with some English foundation willing to read dialogue closely

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting strong plot and fast-paced adventure
Readers impatient with institutional satire and dialogue-dense narrative
Beginners with weak English who find it hard to follow the ironic tone

Reading tips

Read the subtitle and chapter openings first, noting the social premise the author sets up.
Compare the targets of satire with real institutions and jot down the correspondences.
Where dialogue is dense, read passages aloud to feel the ironic tone and comic rhythm.
After finishing, retell the social phenomena the author most wants to criticize to test your understanding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

How should "A Prophetic Comedy" be understood?

It can be understood as using comedy to imagine the absurd consequences that social change might bring; the point is not accurate prediction but testing institutions and human nature through exaggerated situations. Readers need not treat it as strict science fiction but should focus on the satirical target: how efficiency, norms and moral slogans are pushed to extremes and in turn affect daily life.

Is this book suitable as an introduction to reading English originals?

Not very suitable for complete beginners. The original is early twentieth-century English with much dialogue, and the irony depends on context; beginners may read only the literal meaning and miss the jokes. It suits readers with at least a college English CET-4 foundation who are willing to look up words and adapt to British humor; alternatively, read a Chinese introduction first before trying the original.

What background is helpful for reading?

Some knowledge of early twentieth-century British debates on institutions, efficiency and social reform helps, but there is no need to study history in advance. A more practical preparation is to note how the author sets up social premises and lets characters represent different positions, and to distinguish the narrator's tone from characters' views in reading, so as not to mistake irony for the author's own position.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Dame Rose Macaulay Author · English · 1881–1958

Dame Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) was a British novelist, travel writer and critic, born in Rugby, Warwickshire, and educated at Somerville College, Oxford. She first became known for social satires such as Potterism and Dangerous Ages, which target social manners and the psychology of her time. The library also holds eight of her works, including Non-combatants and Others, Mystery at Geneva, The Making of a Bigot, What Not: A Prophetic Comedy, The Furnace and The Lee Shore, whose subjects range from war and urban life to human nature. Her novel The Towers of Trebizond won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and her writing combines wit, intelligence and lively learning. She was made a DBE in 1958.