ABSTRACT
The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader is a selection of the most outstanding critical analysis featured in the journal Comedy Studies in the decade since its inception in 2010.
The Reader illustrates the multiple perspectives that are available when analysing comedy. Wilkie’s selections present an array of critical approaches from interdisciplinary scholars, all of whom evaluate comedy from different angles and adopt a range of writing styles to explore the phenomenon. Divided into eight unique parts, the Reader offers both breadth and depth with its wide range of interdisciplinary articles and international perspectives.
Of interest to students, scholars, and lovers of comedy alike, The Routledge Comedy Studies Reader offers a contemporary sample of general analyses of comedy as a mode, form, and genre.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|2 pages
Back to basics
part II|2 pages
Old comedy
chapter Chapter 5|8 pages
The time-travelling miser: Translation and transformation in European comedy (2:1)
chapter Chapter 6|10 pages
Conflict and slapstick in Commedia dell’Arte – The double act of Pantalone and Arlecchino (4:1)
part III|2 pages
Class, gender, race
chapter Chapter 8|9 pages
‘To what base uses we may return, Horatio!’ – Hamlet, Comedy and Class Struggle (4:2)
chapter Chapter 9|9 pages
No other excuse: Race, class and gender in British Music Hall comedic performance 1914–1949 (3:1)
part IV|2 pages
Doing comedy
chapter Chapter 13|16 pages
The roots of alternative comedy? – The alternative story of 20th Century Coyote and Eighties Comedy (4:1)
part V|2 pages
New comedy?
chapter Chapter 17|5 pages
Up and down with Barry Cryer: From an interview conducted on 22 July 2011 (2:2)
part VI|2 pages
Critical angles
part VII|2 pages
The world of comedy
chapter Chapter 30|18 pages
Silly meets serious: discursive integration and the Stewart/Colbert era (9:2)
chapter Chapter 32|15 pages
Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen, and the seriousness of (mock) documentary (6:1)
part VIII|2 pages
New comedy? Emerging platforms and forms of expression