Elizabeth Zaleski's roundup of literary flatulence in the Western canon arrives at a moment when humor scholarship has gained unexpected traction in academic circles. Zaleski catalogs the most memorable intestinal eruptions across centuries of canonical literature, treating bodily comedy not as frivolous marginalia but as a serious artistic choice deployed by major writers.
The piece spans from medieval texts through modernism, documenting how authors from Chaucer to Joyce employed farts as both comedic relief and social commentary. Zaleski argues that these moments reveal something essential about their authors' relationships to bodily reality and class dynamics. What might appear as mere crude humor often functions as a form of transgression against literary decorum.
The compilation arrives alongside a related essay addressing Charles Dickens, where Zaleski reflects on contemporary readers' resistance to the Victorian novelist. The piece explores how modern audiences struggle with Dickens's sentimentality and moral prescriptions, finding his humanitarian impulses less credible than earlier generations did. Zaleski notes that "most early readers of my novel have found Dickens less sympathetic than I do," suggesting a tension between her own critical rehabilitation of the author and prevailing literary opinion.
Together, these Lit Hub contributions mark a broader reassessment happening in literary journalism. Scholars increasingly examine previously dismissed elements of the canon—bodily functions, sentimental excess, unfashionable earnestness—not to mock but to understand. Zaleski's work participates in this recalibration, insisting that farts deserve serious consideration and that Dickens's alleged failures deserve second looks.
Literary Hub's curation of these pieces reflects publishing's current appetite for essays that combine erudition with humor, academic rigor with accessibility. The site has positioned itself as essential reading for writers and literature professionals who want criticism that takes nothing—not even farts—as beneath serious analysis.
THE TAKEAWAY: Contemporary literary scholarship increasingly recovers dismissed elements of canonical texts as worthy of genuine critical attention.