Introduction An overview -- Twentieth-century comic epic novels and Cotton Mather's Magnalia -- Whitman's Leaves of grass and the twentieth-century comic epic -- Comic retrospection in John Barth's The sot-weed factor and Giles goat-boy -- The tall tale, the absurd, and Black humor in Thomas Pynchon's V and Gravity's rainbow -- Ironic allusiveness and satire in William Gaddis's The recognitions -- The absurd quest and Black humor in Ken Kesey's Sometimes a great notion
