Look Who's Laughing: Gender and ComedyGail Finney First Published in 1994. Look Who's Laughing belies the notion that in a joke the only place for a woman is in the butt, Rather than analysing women's humor in isolation, Gail Finney and twenty scholars map the terrain that the genders share and the areas that each hold exclusively. Their essays investigate witty heroines, sexual parodies, domestic humor and romantic power. They focus on comic drama and fiction, stand-up comedy, cartoons, and film describing the roles gender has played in the creation, reception and interpretation of comedy from the sixteenth century to present. They consider works by Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Zora Neale Hurston and Virginia Woolf, whilst discussing characters such as V.I. Warshawski, Molly Bloom and Elizabeth Bennet. The book's emphasis on comedy's diverse sources uncovers critical prejudices and defines new contexts enabling men and women to understand more about each other's attitudes towards humor, its means and ends. |
Contents
Unity in Difference? | 1 |
Comic Travesties of Sex | 17 |
Womens Erotic Language | 35 |
the Romantic Power of the Witty | 53 |
Aphra Behns | 81 |
Masquerade Modesty and Comedy in Hannah | 99 |
Ada Leverson Oscar Wilde and | 119 |
Victorian | 139 |
Meredith Woolf | 189 |
Sex Class and Anarchy | 205 |
Domestic | 221 |
Testing the Boundaries of Gender | 231 |
Inventing Romantic Comedy | 257 |
Sexual Parody and Genre | 275 |
Bridging Feminist Studies | 315 |
A Revealing Look at Women | 335 |
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Ada Leverson Almodóvar Angellica Aphra Behn argues audience Bakhtin Barreca bed-trick Behn's body Cathy characters Childress comedians comic Cowley critics critique cultural Darcy DeGeneres desire detective fiction dialogue Diana discourse domestic Doricourt Dorothy Richardson drama essay female feminine feminism feminist film Fontinelle Freud gender genre heroine housewife Hurston husband identity Imperia Iván joke Lady language laugh laughter Letitia Leverson literary lover machismo Mae West male marriage marry mask masquerade Master Constable Meredith Mildred Mirabell narrative Nervous Breakdown novel Oscar Wilde parody patriarchal Pedro Almodóvar Pepa Pepa's performance person perspective Petrarchan play pleasure plot political Poundstone prostitutes Rachel readers Renaissance Richardson role romantic comedy Rosalind Roseanne Barr says scene sense sexual Shakespeare social Sphinx stand-up stand-up comedy stereotypes story suggests Susanna Centlivre tion tradition University Press Verge Violetta W.C. Fields West's Wilde woman women women's humor Woolf writing York