COMIC VISION AND COMIC ELEMENTS OF THE 18TH CENTURY NOVEL MOLL FLANDERS BY DANIEL DEFOE

“it is hard to think about the art of fiction without thinking about the art of comedy, for the two have always gone together, hand in hand” says malcolm bradbury, because the comedy is the mode one cannot avoid in a novel. bradbury asserts “the birth of the long prose tale was, then the birth of new vision of the human comedy and from that time it seems prose stories and comedy have never been far apart” (bradbury, 1995: 2). the time when the novel prospers is the time of the development of the comic vision. the comic novelist iris murdoch in an interview in 1964 states that “in a play it is possible to limit one’s scope to pure tragedy or pure comedy, but the novel is almost inevitably an inclusive genre and breaks out of such limitations. can one think of any great novel which is without comedy? i can’t.” according to murdoch, the novel is the most ideal genre to adapt itself to tragicomedy. moll flanders is not a pure tragedy or pure comedy. on the one hand, it conveys a tragic and realistic view of life; on the other hand, tragic situations are recounted in a satirical way. moll’s struggles to live, her subsequent marriages, her crimes for money are all expressed through parody. the aim of this study is to analyze 18th century social life, the comic scenes and especially the satire in the novel by describing the novel’s techniques of humor.