Jenny Diski’s Comic Spirit or the Courage to Confront the Demons of Her Past

In her work, Jenny Diski has dealt with her personal issues with clarity and extraordinary realism. In In Gratitude (2016) Diski explores her past and especially her relationship with her parents. In spite of all the pain they inflicted on her, Diski has the courage to use humour to cope with these excruciating memories. Her comic view of life prevents her from falling into the clutches of melodrama or sentimentalism. Hers is the humour of humility and compassion, which allows her to laugh at her own limitations and failures and accept others in spite of their differences and defects. These hypotheses will be highlighted against the work of some of the most important scholars who have vindicated the positive, creative, liberating and subversive power of comedy and its capacity to deal with all aspects of the human condition.