George Bernard Shaw: The Pertinence of Paradox and the Call of Sense Itself for Charitable Compassion

Like Wilde, George Bernard Shaw specializes in focusing explicitly on the paradoxical and nonsensical character of the clash of sense in humor’s working. The chapter argues that, in doing so, his humor brings out a value aspect of sense itself, as itself making room for and requiring charitable compassion. Because of this emphasis on a specific kind of sense, the focus of his humor on truth, like Wilde’s, is relatively narrow, but the kind of truth it brings out is, again, especially deep. Shaw gives his own account of his humorous stance and procedure in his critical writings, and the chapter explores this account in making its argument.