Showing papers on "Comedy published in 2007"

Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642

Abstract: Introduction 1. Staging Commercial London: The Royal Exchange 2. Credit, Incarceration, and Performance: Staging London's Debtors' Prisons 3. (W)holesaling: Bawdy Houses and Whore Plots in the Drama's Staging of London 4. Ballrooms and Academies: Producing the Cosmopolitan Body in West End London Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

The Cambridge companion to Greek and Roman theatre

Abstract: Introduction Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton Part I. Text in context: 1. 'Telling the tale': a performing tradition from Homer to pantomime Mark Griffith 2. Ancient theatre and performance culture Richard P. Martin 3. Religion and drama Fritz Graf 4. The socio-political dimension of ancient tragedy Jon Hesk 5. Aristotle's Poetics and ancient dramatic theory David Wiles 6. Politics and Aristophanes: watchword 'caution!' Gonda Van Steen 7. Comedy and society from Menander to Terence Sander Goldberg 8. Lost theatre and performance traditions in Greece and Italy Hugh Denard Part II. The nature of performance: 9. Art and theatre in the ancient world Richard Green 10. Festivals and audiences in Athens and Rome Rush Rehm 11. Playing places: the temporary and the permanent Richard Beacham 12. Chorus and dance in the ancient world Yana Zarifi 13. Masks in Greek and Roman theatre Greg McCart 14. A material world: costume, properties and scenic effects Graham Ley 15. Commodity: asking the wrong questions J. Michael Walton 16. The dramatic legacy of myth: Oedipus in opera, television and film Marianne McDonald.

Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

Abstract: Leaving the secluded home of her guardian for the first time, beautiful Evelina Anville is captivated by her new surroundings in London's beau monde - and in particular by the handsome, chivalrous Lord Orville. But her enjoyment soon turns to mortification at the hands of her vulgar and capricious grandmother, and the rakish Sir Clement Willoughby, who torments the naive young woman with his unwanted advances. And while her aristocratic father refuses to acknowledge her legitimacy, Evelina can hold no hope of happiness with the man she loves. Published anonymously in 1778, Frances Burney's epistolary novel brought her instant fame when the secret of its authorship was revealed. With its ingenious combination of romance and satire, comedy and melodrama, Evelina is a sparkling depiction of the dangers and delights of fashionable society.

A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities

Abstract: Comedy is crucial to how the English see themselves. This book considers that proposition through a series of case studies of popular English comedies and comedians in the twentieth century, ranging from the Carry On films to the work of Mike Leigh and contemporary sitcoms such as The Royle Family, and from George Formby to Alan Bennett and Roy 'Chubby' Brown. Relating comic traditions to questions of class, gender, sexuality and geography, A National Joke looks at how comedy is a cultural thermometer, taking the temperature of its times. It asks why vulgarity has always delighted English audiences, why camp is such a strong thread in English humour, why class influences what we laugh at and why comedy has been so neglected in most theoretical writing about cultural identity. Part history and part polemic, it argues that the English urgently need to reflect on who they are, who they have been and who they might become, and insists that comedy offers a particularly illuminating location for undertaking those reflections.

The news about comedy Young audiences, The Daily Show, and evolving notions of journalism

Abstract: Recent survey data suggest that at the same time as young Americans are abandoning traditional news media, they are more likely to identify late-night comedy programs, particularly Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as a destination for learning about election campaigns. In order to explore how journalists are responding to the idea of a comedy program as a news source, this article analyzes discourse about The Daily Show as it appeared in the trade and popular presses between January 1999 and March 2004. Emerging from this analysis is the way in which journalists are using The Daily Show as an occasion to reflect upon the nature of their work and the current state of their profession. For many journalists, The Daily Show has prompted reconsideration of the once rigid distinction between news and entertainment and of the historical conventions used to enforce this distinction.

Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America

Abstract: Prior to the civil rights movement, comedians performed for audiences that were clearly delineated by race. Black comedians performed for black audiences and white comedians performed for whites. Yet during the past forty-five years, black comics have become progressively more central to mainstream culture. In "Laughing Mad", Bambi Haggins looks at how this transition occurred in a variety of media and shows how this integration has paved the way for black comedians and their audiences to affect each other. Historically, African American performers have been able to use comedy as a pedagogic tool, interjecting astute observations about race relations while the audience is laughing. And yet, Haggins makes the convincing argument that the potential of African American comedy remains fundamentally unfulfilled as the performances of blackness must be made culturally digestible for mass consumption. Rather than presenting biographies of individual performers, Haggins focuses on the ways in which the comic persona is constructed and changes across media, from stand-up, to the small screen, to film. She examines the comic televisual and cinematic personae of Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson, and Richard Pryor and considers how these figures set the stage for black comedy in the next four decades. She reads Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock as emblematic of the first and second waves of post - civil rights era African American comedy, and she looks at the socio-cultural politics of Whoopi Goldberg's comic persona through the lens of gender and crossover. "Laughing Mad" also explores how the comedy of Dave Chappelle speaks to and for the post-soul generation. A rigorous analytic analysis, this book interrogates notions of identity, within both the African American community and mainstream popular culture. Written in engaging and accessible prose, it is also a book that will travel from the seminar room, to the barbershop, to the kitchen table, allowing readers to experience the sketches, stand-up, and film comedies with all the laughter they deserve.

A History of Modern Britain

Abstract: "A History of Modern Britain" confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade, political leaders think they know what they are doing, but find themselves confounded. Every time, the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted. Throughout, Britain is a country on the edge - first of invasion, then of bankruptcy, then on the vulnerable front line of the Cold War and later in the forefront of the great opening up of capital and migration now reshaping the world.This history follows all the political and economic stories, but deals too with comedy, cars, the war against homosexuals, Sixties anarchists, oil-men and punks, Margaret Thatcher's wonderful good luck, political lies and the true heroes of British theatre. 'Superb, colourful, outspoken, fresh and richly entertaining. Don't miss' - "The Times". 'Lively, full of rich anecdotes and sparkling pen portraits. He has the rare gift of being able to explain complex issues in a few crisp sentences' - "Sunday Telegraph".

Relief in Hard Times: A Defense of Jon Stewart's Comedy in an Age of Cynicism

Abstract: Esteemed members of the jury: is there anyone here who is not a fan of Jon Stewart? As no hands are raised, I move to empanel all of you as jurors in this case. It is clear that our task is less to...

Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy

Abstract: A. DORIC COMEDY B. ATTIC 'OLD COMEDY' C. 'MIDDLE' AND 'NEW' COMEDY D. THE RECEPTION OF OTHER POETRY E. POLITICS AND POLITICIANS F. PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOSOPHERS G. FOOD AND DINING H. WINE AND SYMPOSIA I. WOMEN J. ASPECTS OF DAILY LIFE

Humour, Work and Organization

Abstract: Part 1: Theorizing Humour, Organization and Work 1. Introduction: Humour and the Study of Organizations (Robert Westwood & Carl Rhodes) 2. Humour as Practically Enacted Theory, or, Why Critics Should Tell More Jokes (Simon Critchley) 3. Humour and Violation (Heather Hopfl) Part 2: Humour in Organizations 4. Theory as Joke (Robert Westwood) 5. The Little Book of Management Bollocks and the Culture of Organization (Martin Parker) 6. 'Don't Get Me Wrong, it's fun here, but...' Ambivalence and Paradox in a 'fun' work environment (Sam Warren and Stephen Fineman) 7. Representing the Unrepresentable: Gender, humour and organization (Allanah Johnston, Dennis Mumby & Robert Westwood) 8. Humour in Workplace Meetings: Challenging hierarchies (Meredith Marra) Part 3: Humour of Organization 9. Representing d'Other: The grotesque body and masculinity at work in The Simpsons (Carl Rhodes & Alison Pullen) 10. Heidegger's Unfunny and the Academic Text (Damian O'Doherty) 11. The Comedy of Ethics (Stephen Linstead) Part 4: The Organization of Humour 12. Advertising: The organizational production of humour (Donncha Kavanagh & Don O'Sullivan) 13. Grotesque Humour Regeneration of McDonaldization and McDonaldland (David M. Boje, Yue Cal-Hillon, Grace-Ann Rosile & Esther R. Thomas) 14. The Staging of Humour (Robert Westwood)

‘Telling the tale’: a performing tradition from Homer to pantomime

Abstract: Greek and Latin literature and drama have been central and formative components of the Western cultural tradition ever since the Middle Ages; and modern conceptions of theatre in general, as of 'tragedy' and 'comedy' as particular dramatic forms, are indelibly shaped by the specific performance modes that evolved during the sixth to the fourth centuries BC in Athens and during the third to the first centuries BC in Rome. The surviving Greek texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander, and the Latin texts of Seneca, Plautus and Terence, comprise a body of 'classical' drama that has long been recognized as canonical and that sometimes feels almost inevitable. (As Aristotle put it, with Sophocles and Euripides 'tragedy attained its nature [ phusis ]', Poetics ch. 4. 1449a15.) But as one follows the developments in Greek and Roman culture that led to the evolution of these forms of drama, one quickly comes to see what a large and diverse body of performance traditions had preceded them, and how many options were available to those theatrical pioneers as they set about shaping the plays that we have come to know so well. Of course the Greeks were not the first to perform stories, or act out social and religious rituals, using words, music, dance, costume and impersonation in some combination or other. 'Theatrical' performances, in the sense of solo or group activities formally presented to an audience in a designated space and for a conventionally recognized purpose or occasion, can be found in almost all societies, ancient or modern, Eastern and Western, and the line between ritual and theatre, ceremony and 'play', may not always be easy - or necessary - to draw.

Aristophanes and the carnival of genres

Abstract: The comedies of Aristophanes are known not only for their boldly imaginative plots but for the ways in which they incorporate and orchestrate a wide variety of literary genres and speech styles. Unlike the writers of tragedy, who prefer a uniformly elevated tone, Aristophanes articulates his dramatic dialogue with striking literary and linguistic juxtapositions, producing a carnivalesque medley of genres that continually forces both audience and reader to readjust their perspectives. In this energetic and original study, Charles Platter interprets the complexities of Aristophanes' work through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical writing. This book charts a new course for Aristophanic comedy, taking its lead from the work of Bakhtin. Bakhtin describes the way multiple voices-vocabularies, tones, and styles of language originating in different social classes and contexts-appear and interact within literary texts. He argues that the dynamic quality of literature arises from the dialogic relations that exist among these voices. Although Bakhtin applied his theory primarily to the epic and the novel, Platter finds in his work profound implications for Aristophanic comedy, where stylistic heterogeneity is the genre's lifeblood.

Encountering Plautus in the Renaissance: A Humanist Debate on Comedy*

Abstract: Historians of comedy can profit from a study of the sixteenth-century debates regarding the merits of Plautus (ca. 254–184 BCE), most of whose works were unknown before the late fifteenth century. Early performances and editions led to contemporary theories regarding laughter, language, and morality, often in the context of a comparison with the plays of Terence (d. 159 BCE), who was sometimes viewed as superior by upper-class audiences. From the conflicting opinions of Andrea Navagero and Francesco Florido, to the neoclassical strictures of Daniel Heinsius, this study pursues learned opinion on Plautus as he became a principal author in the European canon. Plautus’s variances from Aristotelian and Horatian precepts created a lively and lasting ferment in discussions of comedy.

Comedy Verité? The Observational Documentary Meets the Televisual Sitcom

Abstract: bout halfway through the first season of the FOX television show Arrested Development the program’s narrative abruptly confronted its televisual style. As the Bluth family enters a courtroom, the presiding judge announces that no cameras are allowed, and the doors are closed, blackening the television screen and cutting off the unfettered access to the Bluths viewers have enjoyed all season. This courtroom incident is the first—and only—time Arrested Development overtly suggests there is an actual camera crew within the show’s diegesis that is responsible for the documentary “look” of the show. No character addresses the camera or complains about the presence of the crew in his or her car and bedroom. The Bluth family may be gloriously aloof, but they are not so clueless as to fail to recognize they are the subjects of a documentary or reality television show. However, that is exactly what the program looks like. The televisual style of Arrested Development, with its handheld cameras, awkward pacing, and violations of continuity rules, looks a lot more like a documentary than it does a traditional sitcom. Still, this reflexive moment of the slamming courtroom doors is little more than a convenient transition into the commercial break. When the show returns, the cameras will go on unacknowledged, just as before. The observational style will continue to provide intimate access to the unfolding comic travails of the Bluths, with all the visual and aural cues viewers of documentary and reality television programs have become accustomed to. Arrested Development is one of a growing number of television comedies that look different and are made differently from comedies in the past. This essay seeks to situate this emerging televisual mode of production, looking to the producers of the shows to see how they conceptualize their work and explain the mode of production, as well as mapping out how that work might be read A Comedy Verité? The Observational Documentary

Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues: Trials, Depositions, and Drama Comedy

Abstract: This book is a corpus-based study examining thou and you in three speech-related genres from 1560–1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when you became dominant to when thou became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of thou and you . Previous research on thou and you has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.

The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830

Abstract: Chronology Part I. Performance: 1. Acting and actors from Garrick to Kean Peter Thomson 2. 'Dictating to the Empire': performance and theatrical geography in eighteenth-century Britain Jane Moody 3. Scenography and technology Christopher Baugh 4. Spectatorship Jim Davis Part II. Genres: 5. The social life of eighteenth-century comedy Lisa A. Freeman 6. Tragedy Susan Staves 7. Pantomime John O'Brien 8. Romantic melodrama Jacky Bratton Part III. Identities: 9. The making of an English audience: the case of the footmen's gallery Kristina Straub 10. Women playwrights Misty Anderson 11. Entertaining women: the actress in eighteenth-century theatre and culture Laura J. Rosenthal 12. Race and profit in English theatre Julie A. Carlson Part IV. Places of Performance: 13. Private theatricals Gillian Russell 14. Opera and theatre Michael Burden 15. Acting in the periphery: the Irish theatre Helen Burke 16. Theatre and Empire Daniel O'Quinn Part V. Further Reading: 17. Reading theatre, 1730-1830 Jonathan Mulrooney Bibliography.

Wallowing in sex

Abstract: Passengers disco dancing in The Love Boat ’s Acapulco Lounge. A young girl walking by a marquee advertising Deep Throat in the made-for-TV movie Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway . A frustrated housewife borrowing Orgasm and You from her local library in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman . Commercial television of the 1970s was awash with references to sex. In the wake of the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation and gay rights movements, significant changes were rippling through American culture. In representing—or not representing—those changes, broadcast television provided a crucial forum through which Americans alternately accepted and contested momentous shifts in sexual mores, identities, and practices. Wallowing in Sex is a lively analysis of the key role of commercial television in the new sexual culture of the 1970s. Elana Levine explores sex-themed made-for-TV movies; female sex symbols such as the stars of Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman ; the innuendo-driven humor of variety shows ( The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour , Laugh-In ), sitcoms ( M\*A\*S*H , Three’s Company ), and game shows ( Match Game ); and the proliferation of rape plots in daytime soap operas. She also uncovers those sexual topics that were barred from the airwaves. Along with program content, Levine examines the economic motivations of the television industry, the television production process, regulation by the government and the tv industry, and audience responses. She demonstrates that the new sexual culture of 1970s television was a product of negotiation between producers, executives, advertisers, censors, audiences, performers, activists, and many others. Ultimately, 1970s television legitimized some of the sexual revolution’s most significant gains while minimizing its more radical impulses.

Comedy and the trojan war

Abstract: The role of the Trojan War in epic and tragic poetry is well known, its role in comic poetry less so. Yet the war did feature in a number of ancient comedies. This fact might seem surprising, not only because fighting and death are subjects unlikely to give rise to much hilarity, but also because one tends to associate comedy with a type of subject matter markedly different from that of tragedy and epic. Nevertheless, many comedies did adopt mythological subjects,1 and even those set in present-day Athens might allude to myth. This article aims to examine the Trojan War theme as it appears in Old Comedy, and to explain its function with reference to the social and intellectual context of late fifth-century Greece. Thinking about this topic may also open up certain larger questions about the genre of comedy and its relation to myth and tragedy. First, a caveat: there is no extant comedy of the ‘mythological’ type, and for the most part one has to deal with sparse fragments and testimonia.2 This makes it hard to be confident about the manner in which comedians handled the myth. Not only the content but also the date of most plays is unknown. Thus a degree of imagination and guesswork is called for—which, though unprovable, may allow one to situate otherwise unrewarding shards within a satisfying conceptual framework. And there is considerable room for optimism. A number of comedies demonstrably made use of the Trojan War theme—including Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Birds and Daedalus, Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros and Nemesis, Eupolis’ Prospaltians, and Plato’s Menelaus— and for some of these plays the evidence is reasonably substantial. Apart from a few insignificant passing references, and a few allusions which are too insubstantial to interpret,3 the evidence adds up to a remarkably consistent picture. In the first place, it appears that the comedians were interested in the Trojan War less for 412

The play within the play : the performance of meta-theatre and self-reflection

Abstract: Acknowledgements Gerhard FISCHER & Bernhard GREINER: The Play within the Play: Scholarly Perspectives I. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF SELF-REFLECTION Bernhard GREINER: The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm Yifen BEUS: Self-Reflexivity in the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation Klaus R. SCHERPE: 'Backstage Discourse': Staging the Other in Ethnographic and Colonial Literature David ROBERTS: The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation Caroline SHEAFFER-JONES: Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet's The Balcony and The Blacks II. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND META-THEATRE Christian SINN: The Figure in the Carpet: Metadramatical Concepts in Jacob Bidermann's Cenodoxus (1602) John GOLDER: Holding a Mirror up to Theatre: Baro, Gougenot, Scudery and Corneille as Self-Referentialists in Paris, 1628-1635/36 Manfred JURGENSEN: Rehearsing the Endgame: Max Frisch's Biography: A Play Barnard TURNER: Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real Thing (1982): New Frames and Old Ulrike LANDFESTER: The Invisible Fool: Botho Strauss's Postmodern Metadrama and the History of Theatrical Reality Shimon LEVY: Queen of a Bathtub: Hanoch Levin's Political, Aesthetic and Ethical Metatheatricality Gad KAYNAR: The Disguised and Distanced Real(ity) Play within the Fictitious Play in Israeli Stage-Drama Zahava CASPI: A Lacerated Culture, A Self-Reflective Theatre: The Case of Israeli Drama III. PERSPECTIVES ON THE WORLD: COMEDY, MELANCHOLY, THEATRUM MUNDI Frank ZIPFEL: 'Very Tragical Mirth': The Play within the Play as a Strategy for Interweaving Tragedy and Comedy Herbert HERZMANN: Play and Reality in Austrian Drama: The Figure of the Magister Ludi Helmut J. SCHNEIDER: Playing Tragedy: Detaching Tragedy from Itself in Classical Drama from Lessing to Buchner Gerhard FISCHER: Playwrights Playing with History: The Play within the Play and German Historical Drama (Buchner, Brecht, Weiss, Muller) Birgit HAAS: Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz's Festung and Albert Ostermaier's The Making of B-Movie IV. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF SOCIO-CULTURAL REFLECTION AND INTERCULTURAL APPROPRIATION Lada Cale FELDMAN: The Context Within: The Play within the Play between Theatre Anthropology, System Theory and Postcolonial Critique Maurice BLACKMAN : Intercultural Framing in Aime Cesaire's Une Tempete Kyriaki FRANTZI: Re-Interpreting Shadow Material in an Ancient Greek Myth: Another Night: Medea V. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF INTERMEDIAL TRANSFORMATION Yvonne NOBLE: John Gay and the Frame Play Donald BEWLEY: Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude Theresia BIRKENHAUER: Theatrical Transformation, Media Superimposition and Scenic Reflection: Pictorial Qualities of Modern Theatre and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss Opera Ariadne auf Naxos Erika GREBER: Pushkin in Love, or: A (Screen)Play within the Play. The Cinematic Potential of Romantic-Ironic Narration in Eugene Onegin Alessandro ABBATE: The Text within the Text, the Screen within the Screen: Multi-Layered Representations in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet Ken WOODGATE: 'Gotta Dance' (in the Dark): Lars von Trier's Critique of the Musical Genre Tim MEHIGAN: The Game of the Narrative: Kleist's Fiction from a Game-Theoretical Perspective Alexander HONOLD: French Beans and Mashed Potatoes: Agonistic Play and Symbolic Acting in Gottfried Keller's Prose Fiction Ulrike GARDE: Playing with the Apparatus: Franz Kafka's 'In the Penal Colony' and Barrie Kosky's Interpretation for the Melbourne International Arts Festival Notes on Contributors Index of Names

Comedy and society from Menander to Terence

Abstract: 'Menander and Life! Which of you imitated which?' Aristophanes of Byzantium The third-century scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium, one of Alexandria's greatest figures, certainly knew Greek literature and how to read it, but his oft-quoted epigram has not been especially helpful to Menander's reputation. Finding in the conventional (some have said 'hackneyed') plots and characters of Menandrean comedy, where citizen boy will get citizen girl even if he is a rapist or she a foundling, an adequate reflection of 'life' as commonly lived on this planet, requires powers of generalization that not every critic is willing to apply. His genre may itself be partly to blame: New Comedy's canvas is said to be too small, its vision too narrow, its artificiality too apparent. When comedy lost its active engagement in the loud and vigorous life of the fifth-century polis , the assumption goes, it embraced all too thoroughly an effete and superficial, perhaps even decadent, dream of bourgeois life in the backwater that was post-classical Athens. Literary critics had little incentive to question this view. New Comedy's limitation was also seen as its salvation. Aristophanes may have been brilliant, but Old Comedy's persistent focus on the political, social and cultural concerns of fifth-century Athens rooted the genre so deeply in its own society that any appeal beyond Attica was decidedly limited. A play like Women at the Thesmophoria ( Thesmophoriazousae ), spun from the peculiarities of an Attic festival and the mannerisms of an Athenian playwright, could hardly interest audiences beyond the boundaries of its time and place. Comedy became exportable only in the course of the fourth century as it gradually unmoored from the specific preoccupations of Athenian society and generalized its themes.

Aphra Behn's The City Heiress : Feminism and the Dynamics of Popular Success on the Late Seventeenth-Century Stage

Abstract: For all the attention devoted to Aphra Behn's fiction, poetry, and plays over the last twenty-five years, few critics have focused on what remains a crucial problem in the scholarship on her work: the half-acknowledged tensions between her critical and commercial success on the Restoration stage and the current consensus that emphasizes her resistance to and protests against the endemic antifeminism of her time. (1) Paradoxically, the more critics insist on Behn's iconoclastic significance as a pioneering woman writer, the more difficult it seems to explain cogently the appeal of comedies, such as the second part of The Rover (1681), The Roundheads (1680), and The City Heiress (1682), that travesty "proper" feminine behavior, ridicule male authority figures, and debunk romantic love. Although the "resentful realism" of these comedies indicates that Behn and her audiences recognized only too well the constraints on women in late seventeenth-century society, her concern with restaging, in comic form, the emotional and financial difficulties of women's lives does not in itself account for her string of theatrical successes. (2) In their ironic treatment of female chastity and masculine constancy, as I have argued elsewhere, her comedies present a sophisticated and sympathetic understanding of the ideological complexities of women's existence in a misogynistic society. (3) By demystifying the masculinization of desire that constructs women only as sexual objects, Behn undermines the ideological assumptions and values that make female identity dependent on inviolate chastity and rigorous self-policing; she can then legitimate female desire by inverting the gender politics of her spectators' gaze and turn her libertine heroes into self-parodying objectifications of masculine desirability. (4) This process of defamiliarizing the gender dynamics of the wit comedy of the 1670s allows Behn to exploit the ironies that her regendering of desire creates: sexually compromised women become heroines; rich heiresses remain willfully blind to the consequences of their own desire; and wits become libertine performance artists who have limited success in manipulating women. In this respect, Behn implicates her audience--men and women alike--in participatory spectacles of ideological recognition and disavowal, and it is this complex process of interpellation that gives her comedies their ironic leverage. In The City Heiress, Behn brilliantly stages the comic struggles of her characters to come to terms with their cynical participation in social rituals that mirror those of fashionable Restoration society: her heroes and heroines recognize that they, like the audience, are complicit in the very practices and beliefs that frustrate their desires. In this essay, I want to explore the complex relationship between Behn's protofeminist skepticism, her ironic questioning of love and marriage, and the popularity of a play that intrigued her contemporaries. In her preface to The Luckey Chance (1687), Behn responds to her critics by asserting that "unbyast Judges of Sense" have to acknowledge that she "had made as many good Comedies, as any one Man that has writ in our Age." (5) This claim is not an exaggeration, and by invoking the theatrical success of her "good Comedies;' she yokes the aesthetic quality of her plays to their commercial success. The City Heiress was singled out by her contemporaries as one of her "good" and particularly lucrative comedies, although comparatively few modern critics have discussed it at length. (6) The contemporary theater historian Gerard Langbaine remarked that the "play had the luck to be well receiv'd in the Town. (7) The Whig dramatist Thomas Shadwell attacked it in The Tory Poets: A Satire; Robert Gould reacted with moralistic horror at the sex scene between the widow Lady Galliard and the hero Wilding; and in his poem, "To the Sappho of the Age, suppos'd to Ly-In of a Love-Distemper, or a Play," William Wycherley, in his typically labored verse, jumbles images of sex, childbirth, venereal disease, and Behn's public fame to celebrate the play as one of the "easiest Off-springs of [her] Wanton Brain": Thus, as your Beauty did, your Wit does now, The Women's Envy, Men's Diversion grow; Who, to be Clap'd or Clap you, round you sit, And tho' they Sweat for it, will croud your Pit; But, if 'tis true, that you had need to Sweat, Get, if you can, at your New Play, a Seat. …

Assessing Boundaries – Censorship and Translation An Introduction

Abstract: Censorship of the English stage goes back in an unbroken line to the office of the Master of the Revels in the sixteenth century, but probably existed in some form or another for as long as there was any dramatic tradition. Richard Findlater would take the origins of censorship back further to the foundation of the Revels Office in 1545, or even earlier to the 1543 act "for the advancement of true religion and the abolishment of the contrary". The Lord Chamberlain could refuse a licence for anything which in his opinion threatened "the preservation of good manners, decorum, or of the public peace". Comedy was something very different, especially when it consisted of a satyr play, Euripide's Cyclops with its chorus of priapic satyrs, and Aristophanes whose eleven plays are sufficiently full of jokes about bodily functions for it to be almost impossible to detach the socio-political comedy from the scatological.

Almost Friends: Post-Holocaust Comedy, Tragedy, and Friendship in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated

Abstract: Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel, Everything is Illuminated, addresses the concern of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and perpetrators with the possibility of reconciliation and how it relates to Holocaust memory. Through the use of characters that are grandchildren of survivors and perpetrators, and by contrasting two entirely different approaches to memory, one tragic and the other comic, Foer brings out the quandary of post-Holocaust reconciliation. This essay examines the dynamic relationship between the two main characters, Alex, a grandchild of perpetrators, and Jonathan, a grandchild of survivors, and their modes of remembering that vie with each other to the very end of the novel. The tension between them is underscored by Alex's desire to win Jonathan's friendship. Jonathan's ultimate refusal of friendship and reconciliation is examined in relation to Holocaust memory and the meaning of Holocaust representation, which, for Foer, should resist not only comedy but also full reconciliation. Everything is Illuminated1 by Jonathan Safran Foer is an innovative postHolocaust novel. While like many post-Holocaust novels it is concerned with the relationship of writing to memory, it is not only interested in the perennial question posed "after Auschwitz" as to whether one can respond to the atrocities of the Holocaust through writing or whether one should remain silent. Rather, it also touches on how, in the context of contemporary post-Holocaust literature and history, writing and memory must deal with the topic of reconciliation between Jews and non-Jews of the second and third generation post-Holocaust. In Everything is Illuminated, this is specifically a question of friendship and writing. The two are intertwined: friendship is not sought after through normal channels; it is arrived at, or thwarted, through the trickery of writing. The dialogue between the two main characters illustrates this situation: each is trying to trick the other into admitting or seeing something that he doesn't want to see or admit. However, as their differing accounts, fictions, and letters make clear, one is interested in friendship whereas the other is not; one wants to remember and forgive, whereas the other seeks neither friendship nor forgiveness. Given this basic dichotomy, and as this is a novel dealing with the Holocaust, then, there is a struggle between comic and tragic modes of literary representation, the one bespeaking reconciliation, and the other its opposite, irreconcilable difference. The disparity between the two main characters' novels, identities, and, most important, their histories is delineated through this "written" and "real" struggle, a struggle which is especially significant because they come from different sides of the Holocaust divide: one is the grandchild of survivors; the other is the grandchild of the perpetrators. The outcome of this struggle has implications for anyone interested in how one represents the Holocaust, not to mention the question of reconciliation, both of which are becoming more of a concern as, with time, our distance from the Holocaust increases. A Comic Start Broadly stated, Foer's novel begins with a contemporary blend of the comic mode and one of its derivations, the quest Romance. According to Northrop Frye, the comic mode often presents a hero who is pitted against a villain or antagonist; in the end, the villain is either banished or transformed by the actions of the hero.2 The quest Romance draws on this mode, but it commonly includes the hero, his antagonist, and others, who travel to find a lost object and who, in the process, transform the land, which has become depleted, back to its original splendor. In some recent (and not so recent) versions of the quest Romance, such as The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, the journey brings people from different social classes or identities together as the adventure progresses. In fact, it often consists of people who are incredibly different, even antagonistic, who during the journey undergo a transformation and become friends. …

Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790-1840

Abstract: List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: uncloseting women in British Romantic theatre Catherine Burroughs Part I. Historical Contexts: Revolution and Entrenchment: 1. Baillie, Siddons, Larpent: gender, power and politics in the theatre of Romanticism Jeffrey N. Cox 2. Reviewing women in British Romantic theatre Greg Kucich Part II. Nations, Households, Dramaturgy: 3. Women and history on the Romantic stage: More, Yearsley, Burney and Mitford Katherine Newey 4. English national identity in Mariana Starke's The Sword of Peace: India, abolition and the rights of women Jeanne Moskal 5. Women's sovereignty on trial: Joanna Baillie's comedy The Tryal as metatheatrics Marjean D. Purinton Part III. Performance and Closet Drama: 6. Outing Joanna Baillie Susan Bennett 7. The management of laughter: Jane Scott's Camilla the Amazon in 1998 Jacky Bratton and Gilli Bush-Bailey Part IV. Criticism and Theory: 8. Elizabeth Inchbald: a woman critic in her theatrical culture Marvin Carlson 9. Authorial performances in the criticism and theory of Romantic women playwrights Thomas C. Crochunis Part V. Translation, Adaptation, Revision: 10. Suicide and translation in the dramaturgy of Elizabeth Inchbald and Anne Plumptre Jane Moody 11. Remaking love: remorse in the theatre of Baillie and Inchbald Julie Carlson Bibliography Index.

"First, They're Foreigners": The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Limits of Dissident Laughter

Abstract: Much of the humour on The Daily Show is directed at subjects constructed as “foreign.” Despite the show's reputation for “subversiveness,” such humour relies on demeaning stereotypes. Although the show's parodying of “serious” news seemingly qualifies it as a site of resistance to conventional media strategies, its comedy of the non-American aligns it with orthodox assumptions of American normativity. The situation is complicated by the show's urbane self-consciousness vis-a-vis its reliance on stereotyping. Ultimately, its dissidence has well-defined limits. The Daily Show's uneasy play with the foreign is a revealing reflex of the historical moment, with its troubling burden of American anxieties.

The Golden Age of Cinema: Hollywood, 1929-1945

Abstract: Title Page. Table of Contents. Figures and Captions. Acknowledgements. Dedication. Introduction. 1. Major Historical Events. 1.1. Economic Situation. 1.2. Societal Issues. 1.3. Hollywood Responds to the Crises. 1.4. Other Leisure Activities. 2. Film Business. 2.1. The Studios. 2.2. Production. 2.3. Distribution. 2.4. Exhibition. 3. Technology. 3.1. The Sound Revolution. 3.2. Color Film Production. 3.3. Wide-Screen Experiments of 1929-1931. 3.4. Special Effects. 4. Censorship. 4.1. Silent Era Background. 4.2. The Production Code. 4.3. "Pre-Code" Hollywood. 4.4. The Production Code Administration. 4.5. "Exploitation" Films and Foreign Imports. 4.6. Politics and the PCA. 4.7. The Outlaw. 4.8. The Office of War Information Bureau of Motion Pictures. 4.9. The PCA During the War. 5. Narrative and Style. 5.1. Narrative Strategies. 5.2. Stylistic Techniques. 5.3. Narrative in Stagecoach. 5.4. Style in Stagecoach. 5.5. A Note on "Studio" Style. 5.6. A Note on Genre Style. 5.7. A Note on Film Noir. 5.8. A Note on Directorial Style. 6. Genres. 6.1. The Western. 6.2. The Gangster Film. 6.3. The Adventure Film. 6.4. The Horror Film. 6.5. The Detective Film. 6.6. The War Film. 6.7. Comedy. 6.8. The Musical. 6.9. The Woman's Film. 6.10. Other Genres. 7. Stars and the Star System. 7.1. The Star as Business Commodity. 7.2. The Multiplicity of Stars. 7.3. The Star as Actor. 7.4. The Most Popular Stars. 8. Conclusion. Index

"No Flips in the Pool": Discursive Practice in Hawai'i Creole

Abstract: Linguistic hybridity is the process of the authorial unmasking of another’s speech, through a language that is double-accented and double-styled. The present study investigates how linguistic resources, especially code-switching is used for meaning making in local comedy shows in Hawai‘i. Local comedy is inseparable from the use of carnivalistic act. This act deconstructs attempts at stabilizing social systems by being playfully and non-violently subversive. While there are many studies of language and humor, there are much fewer studies on the use of code-switching in comedy. The present study is particularly interested in the latter and specifically addresses Bakhtin’s work on carnival. It is often maintained that ethnic jokes marginalize those of Filipino origin as the Other. However, the present paper claims that both functions of comedy - marginalizing of the Other and disrupting of official views of reality - are inseparably intertwined. Andy Bumatai, a local comic, tactically achieves carnivalistic effects while negotiating and juggling his subjectivity. Given this, code-switching as well as language selection can be a powerful tool for doublevoicing. Little is known about the pragmatics of pidgin and creole languages. Hence, the present study provides a starting point for future projects on the discursive practice in Hawai‘i Creole.