The Rhetoric of Satire in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim

Abstract

The current research paper argues that Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim not only employs satire, irony, and paradox dexterously—an issue that has been approached by many—but also demonstrates a rhetorical variability of a Menippean kind of satire. The writer addresses the issues raised in the novel from new and different angles. He provides a rhetoric of satire that has enabled him to touch upon some uneasy and disturbing facts of his society, yet maintaining an uncensored and immune position to deplore. Therefore, the present study intends to investigate in depth the multilayered style and satirical wit in the novel based on Menippean satirical rhetoric of inquiry and provocation, play and display, employing Dustin Griffin’s interdisciplinary notion of satiric discourse. It will address the various elements incorporated and deployed by the writer in the course of satirizing the novel.