Woody Allen and the Literary Canon

Abstract

Allen's early comedies have no shortage of slapstick humor and sexual innuendos, yet often, there can be found also a rich allusiveness and wide-ranging erudition. His non-comic films confirm and deepen this unique intellectual intertextuality, often evoking literary works of the existentialist and absurdist traditions. The exact assessment of Woody Allen's relationship to the literary canon is more problematic than it might initially appear — not least because of inconsistencies within his own self-presentation in interviews and his own writings. At times, he frankly discusses literary authors with remarkable sophistication and aplomb, articulating a post-Sartre, post-Kafka, post-Beckett worldview and aesthetic. From the outset, Allen's affinity for allusions to and quotations from the literary canon was manifest, made all the funnier in their often incongruous contexts. The literary canon on Woody Allen's comedic genius is most apparent in Love and Death, the most allusive and intertextual film ever made.

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