Gilbert Keith Chesterton: The Impertinence of Paradox and the Meaningfulness of Reality Itself

Like Wilde and Shaw, G. K. Chesterton 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 reality itself, the meaningfulness of reality simply as reality. Because of this emphasis on a specific kind of sense, the focus of his humor on truth, like Wilde’s and Shaw’s, is relatively narrow, but the kind of truth it brings out is, again, especially deep. Chesterton gives his own account of his humorous stance and procedure in his critical writings, and the chapter explores this account in making its argument.