GEgan_Book_as_Object_2001.pdf (231.87 kB)
The book as object in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s 'Hancock’s half hour' scripts
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posted on 2008-11-07, 09:39 authored by Gabriel EganIt is common critical practice these days to describe the work of previous generations
of critics as idealistic in the worst possible sense, treating literature as though it
existed in a realm of pristine ideas when in fact it can only ever exist in material form
as one or more textualizations. In this paper I want to consider how the relationship
between an idealized text and its imperfect physical embodiment is explored in an
unlikely corner of English comic history, an episode of the BBC radio and television
show Hancock's Half Hour starring Tony Hancock and written by Ray Galton and
Alan Simpson. The episode is called "The Missing Page" and was first broadcast on
11 March 1960 (Galton & Simpson 1960) on BBC television and re-recorded with
virtually the same script as an audio performance five years later (Galton & Simpson
1965).
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