“IF I AM ELECTED DEVIL”: POLITICAL SATIRE AND PARODY IN PHILIP ROTH’S OUR GANG
“IF I AM ELECTED DEVIL”: POLITICAL SATIRE AND PARODY IN PHILIP ROTH’S OUR GANG

Summary/Abstract: Half a century after the book’s publication, this article will revisit Philip Roth’s 1971 Our Gang, a biting satire of American politics and policies under Richard Nixon’s presidency. It will focus on the writer’s masterful ventriloquizing of political discourse, which lies at the heart of the novel’s display of a disquietingly contemporaneous mixture of reckless ideology and public addresses, manipulative rhetoric and speech mannerisms, cynicism and newspeak. Via close contextual readings, the proposed analysis proves that Our Gang is far from dated and has not lost its relevance in time, remaining an intriguing, yet important piece in the Rothian corpus.

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