The Victorian Comic Spirit

by Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9780754600169
• ISBN10: 0754600165
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Ltd

Summary

'Comedy' and 'humour' are not words most associate with the Victorian period, yet one needs hardly look far to find a culture rife with laughter, irony, and with what Meredith and others called the 'comic spirit'. These 12 essays by noted international scholars of Victorian literature and culture reanimate that spirit by exploring humour in its social context.While previous studies of humour in the period focus on the age's own ongoing interest in the old distinction in comic theory between wit and humour, this volume shows how inadequate this distinction is in accounting for the many types of Victorian comic representation. These essays turn from linguistic or psychological analyses of humour and turn instead toward the social production of humour and the complex cultural dynamics that underlie it. More than simply describing the multifarious faces of the Victorian comic spirit, in other words, these analyses also expose its polymorphously perverse intelligence. It is an intelligence that is self-conscious and ironical, critical and dangerous, exposing contradictions and fissures in dominant ideological discourses, unmasking their many hypocrisies.

Author Biography

John S. Batts has taught at the University of Ottawa in Canada for thirty years Rob K. Baum teaches performance movement and theory at the University of Haifa, Israel Abigail Burnham Bloom is Managing Editor of the journal Victorian Literature and Culture Nicholas Freeman teaches at the University of Bristol Joseph H. Gardner is Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Kentucky Eileen Gillooly teaches English and comparative literature at Columbia University Patricia Marks is Professor of English at Valdosta State University Patricia Murphy teaches at Missouri Southern State College James Najarian is Assistant Professor of English at Boston College David Nash is Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University Margaret D. Stetz is Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies at Georgetown University Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The University of Memphis Carolyn Williams is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vii
The Nineteenth Century General Editors' Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: New Perspectives on the Victorian Comic Spirit	xiii
Parody, Pastiche, and the Play of Genres: The Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan	1	(22)
Carolyn Williams
The Fissure King: Parody, Ideology, and the Imperialist Narrative	23	(20)
Patricia Murphy
Laughing at the Almighty: Freethinking Lampoon, Satire, and Parody in Victorian England	43	(24)
David Nash
Tipping Mr. Punch ``the Haffable Wink'': E. J. Milliken's Cockney Verse Letters	67	(24)
Patricia Marks
American Humor: The Mark of Twain on Jerome K. Jerome	91	(24)
John S. Batts
Humor as Daughterly Defense in Cranford	115	(26)
Eileen Gillooly
Dickens's Dystopian Metacomedy: Hard Times, Morals, and Religion	141	(12)
Joseph H. Gardner
Transcendence through Incongruity: The Background of Humor in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus	153	(20)
Abigail Burnham Bloom
``Falling into Philistine Hands'': Swinburne's Transgressive Correspondence	173	(18)
Nicholas Freeman
Arnold's Irony and the Deployment of Dandyism	191	(14)
James Najarian
Salome: Re/Dressing Wilde on the Rim	205	(14)
Rob K. Baum
The Laugh of the New Woman	219	(24)
Margaret D. Stetz
Notes on Contributors	243	(4)
Index	247