Trolling Before the Internet

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.>

Auteur

David Rudrum

Contenu

Acknowledgements
Prefatory note on content

Introduction:
Trolling in/and/as Literature
Chapter One: Trolling is .
Trolling and its definitions: What we (don't) know so far
Chapter Two: .to defame, insult, or humiliate an opponent in public.
From flyting to flaming; from Beowulf to Shakespeare
Chapter Three: .or to make a public statement.
Trolling the Pope: Martin Luther Goes Viral
Chapter Four: .of views that are not sincerely held.
U Can Has Babeez! - Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal
Chapter Five: .but instead aim to court controversy.
Oscar Wilde as a contrarian troll, or, How to put the 'wit' into 'Twitter'
Chapter Six: .or to be provocative or vexatious.
'A Slap in the Face of Public Taste': some avant-garde trolls
Chapter Seven: .sometimes with legal consequences.
Social justice trolling: Émile Zola's J'Accuse.!
Conclusions

Index