A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Empire 5

Drawing together contributions from scholars in a range of fields within 19th- and 20th-century cultural, literary, and theater studies, this volume provides a thorough and varied overview of the many forms comedy took in the 19th century. Given the earth-shattering cultural changes and political events that mark the decades between 1800 and 1920 ― shifting borders, socioeconomic upheaval, scientific and technological innovation, the rise of consumerism and mass culture, unprecedented overseas expansion by European and American imperial powers ― it is no wonder that people in the Age of Empire turned to comedy in order to make sense of the contradictions that structure modern identity and navigate the sociocultural fault lines within modern life. Comical, humorous, and satirical cultural artifacts from the period capture the anxieties and aspirations, the petty resentments and lofty ideals, of a world buffeted by change. This volume explores the aesthetic, political, and ethical dimensions of comedy in the context of blackface minstrelsy, nonsense poetry, music hall and pantomime, comic almanacs and joke books, journalism, silent film, popular novels, and hygiene magazines, among other phenomena. It also provides a detailed account of contentious debates among social Darwinists, psychoanalysts, and political philosophers about the meaning and significance of comedy and laughter to human life. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identity, the body, politics and power, laughter, and ethics. These eight divergent approaches to comedy in the Age of Empire add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject. How has our expression, use and reception of comedy developed from antiquity to the present day? What role has it occupied in Western culture, and what can it tell us about how society has changed? In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by 55 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. The volumes describe various manifestations of comedy, its use in religion, theatre and literature, and its historical and philosophical significance. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. Publisher LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS x SERIES PREFACE xii Introduction: Comic Frames in the Age of Empire / Matthew Kaiser 1 1. Form: An Empire of Jokes in the Age of American Expansion / Todd Nathan Thompson 19 2. Theory: Deadpan and Comedy Theory / Sarah Balkin 43 3. Praxis: A Comedy Revolution / Milena Kozić 67 4. Identity: Popular Performance from Peoria to Paris / Will Visconti 93 5. The Body: From Grimaldi to Chaplin / Sara Lodge 117 6. Politics and Power: Nineteenth-Century American Humor / Gregg Camfield 143 7. Laughter: The Ugly History / Matthew Kaiser 171 8. Ethics: Dickensian Satire and Mealtime Shame / Rob Jacklosky and Matthew Kaiser 199 NOTES 217 REFERENCES 221 INDEX 241