Session Nine: Parody

This novel, set in the roaring twenties in Britain, is a parody of England's class ridden society. The architect, Professor Silenus, is (of course) and emigre from Eastern Europe where things are far more progressive. You are asked to read Part Two of the story, but Silenus reappears at the end, almost enjoying the last laugh. Given the progressive, perhaps utopian, nature of modernism it is illuminating to read Waugh's witty scorn that implies that here really things will ever be the same, and to understand his view of modernism written for laughs.