ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Karl Marx, and explores the possibility that a certain kind of British humour, at least — 'Shandean humour', indeed — may not be so foreign to his work as one might imagine. Marxist humour is certainly not a contradiction in terms, and some of the best jokes have been told about communism. Likewise Marx himself has often been the butt of others' humour. Wheen's approach to Das Kapital is nevertheless distinctive, for he combines an interest in the work's literary qualities with an interest in its humour, linking both to the Shandean inclinations of Marx's youth. In reading Marx's magnum opus against the grain and linking it back to the early humorous impulse of Scorpion und Felix, Wheen nevertheless alerts us to what one might call, in Sternean manner, some of the Eigenheiten [peculiarities] in Marx's rambling, incomplete masterpiece, and confirms that there is Shandean humour to be found in even the unlikeliest of places.
