A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002
Ordinary Pleasures
Couples, Conversation, and Comedy
Kay Young
“Literary culture is absorbed with the relationship between lovers and
conversation. How could it have taken so long for someone to write a book
about it? There is no other work directly on this theme and nothing like
Young's fresh and engaging study. She shows us that of course the talk between Odysseus and Penelope should be examined alongside the talk
between Benedick and Beatrice and the talk between Rick and Ilsa. Any critic
of film, literature, or drama who offers to treat a scene of conversation
between lovers will find a superb starting point in this book.” —Mark Turner, University of Maryland
Ordinary Pleasures offers a new theory of narrative in its uncovering
of how conversations and comic exchanges between lovers in stories create
an intimacy and happiness of the everyday. Drawing on a diverse body
of theory (from sociolinguistics to philosophy to literary criticism) and
reading an unexpectedly eclectic group of texts (works by Shakespeare and
Tolstoy appear beside Casablanca and I Love Lucy), Kay Young explores how
narrative couples play together, struggle together, and return to one another
to experience what it means to be in a relationship over time.
Kay Young is an assistant professor of Department of English at the
University of California–Santa Barbara.
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THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
