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Description

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice presents the most current international scholarship on the complexity and subversive potential of women’s comedic speech, literature, and performance. Earlier comedy theorists such as Freud and Bergson did not envision women as either the agents or audiences of comedy, only as its targets. Only more recently have scholarly studies of comedy begun to recognize and historicize women’s contributions to—and political uses of—comedy. The essays collected here demonstrate the breadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy, spanning centuries of literature and a diversity of methodologies.
Through a reconsideration of literary, theatrical, and mass media texts from the Classical period to the present, Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice responds to the historical marginalization and/or trivialization of both women and comedy. The essays collected in this volume assert the importance of recognizing the role of women and comedy in order to understand these texts, their historical contexts, and their possibilities and limits as models for social engagement. In the spirit of comedy itself, these analyses allow for opportunities to challenge and reevaluate the theoretical approaches themselves.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations


Preface 000
Regina Barreca


Introduction: Dorothy Parker's Headache

Peter Dickinson, Anne Higgins, Paul Matthew St. Pierre, Diana Solomon, Sean
Zwagerman


Part I: Histories, Politics and Forms

Laughing Aphrodite

Laurie O'Higgins

Comedy in Ancient Greece and Rome: What Was Funny, Whose Humor Was It,
and How Do We Explain the Jokes without Killing Them?

Barbara Gold

Mary and Her Sisters

Anne Higgins

Feminist Humor without Women: The Challenge of Reading (in) the Middle Ages

Lisa Perfetti

Laugh, or Forever Hold Your Peace: Comic Crowd Control
in Margaret Cavendish's Dramatic Prologues and Epilogues

Diana Solomon

Domestic Manners of the Americans: A Transatlantic Phenomenon

Linda Morris

Part II: Approaches, Texts and Audiences

The Business of British Burlesque

Jacky Bratton

The Comic

Product details

Published Feb 24 2017
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 280
ISBN 9781683930723
Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Illustrations 17 b/w photos;
Dimensions 9 x 6 inches
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Peter Dickinson

Anthology Editor

Anne Higgins

Anthology Editor

Paul Matthew St. Pierre

Anthology Editor

Diana Solomon

Anthology Editor

Sean Zwagerman

Contributor

Regina Barreca

Contributor

Jacky Bratton

Contributor

Lisa Colletta

Contributor

Joanne Gilbert

Contributor

Barbara Gold

Contributor

Shannon Hengen

Contributor

Kirsty Johnston

Contributor

Linda A. Morris

Contributor

Lisa Perfetti

Contributor

Kay Young

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.

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