“John Dos Passos’ U. S. A. and the Menippean Tradition"

This essay draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories about Menippean satire as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and The Dialogic Imagination to analyze John Dos Passos’ trilogy U. S. A.. It argues that reading U. S. A. as a Menippean satire clarifies why Dos Passos adopts a mixed generic form, an issue which has not been satisfactorily addressed in previous critical studies. To support the identification of this important generic precedent, it relates Dos Passos’ beliefs about the role of the intellectual in society during the early part of his career to the moral stance of the satirist and traces affinities between his aesthetics and the serio-comic tradition. Close analysis of the trilogy as a Menippean satire sheds new light on Dos Passos’ aims, techniques and politics.