Comedy A Geographic and Historical Guide [Two Volumes]

Subjects:

• Popular Culture » Popular Culture (General)
• Literature » American Literature
• Literature » Drama

Reviews:

• This two-volume collection of essays by scholars who are experts on a variety of comedic topics shows that comedy has a long history and a broad geography. The contributors' fascinating accounts range over a variety of divergent eras and areas....[t]he set offers much to admire....[e]arns a place in the general literature on comedy--particularly for its essays on such contemporary comedic forms as stand-up comedy television sitcoms. On the whole, it demonstrates that comedy is far from dead. Recommended. All collections.
  —Choice April 2006
• [S]tudents ... will find this book a useful resource... I do not know of any book which covers the literary criticism of comedy in such exhaustive detail as this... University libraries ... catering for courses in English literature, media studies, etc. will find eager readers for it. [S]tudents of the comic tradition in Western culture will find the information they need neatly laid out for them in a clear and accessible fashion.
  —Reference Reviews June 2006

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Volume I
• Academic Humor by Paul Schlueter
• African-American Comedians by Frank J. Miles
• African-American Humor by John W. Lowe
• African Film Comedy by Carina Yervasi
• American Drama Since 1975 by Richard Brucher
• American Film by Leo Charney
• American Jewish Humor by James D. Bloom
• American Literature in the Nineteenth Century by Susan Welsh
• American Political Cartoons and Comics by Kalman Goldstein
• Animation by Kirsten Thompson
• Arthurian Romance by Andrew Welsh
• Black Comedy by Benjamin Nathan Schachtman
• British Contemporary Comedy by David Hawkes
• Canadian Comedy by Gerald Lynch
• Children's Humor by Kathryn Douglas
• Commedia dell' Arte by Frances K. Barasch
• English Comedy, Elizabethan and Jacobean, Naomi Conn Liebler
• English Comedy, Restoration and Augustan, John Richetti
• English Comedy, Victorian, by Heather L. Braun
  
• Volume II
• Farce by Norman R. Shapiro
• French Contemporary Comedy by Alyson Waters
• French Drama in the 17th Century by Philip Koch
• German Comedy by Bettina Brandt
• Greek Comedy by Mary C. English
• Irish Comedy by James M. Cahalan
• Irony by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen
• Italian Comedy by Nina da Vinci Nichols
• Middle English Comedy by Andrew Welsh
• Native American Trickster Tales by Arnold Krupat
• The Philosophy of Humor by Adrian Bardon
• Queer Comedy by Ken Feil
• Roman Comedy by Maurice Charney
• The Romantic Period by William Galperin
• Satire by Harry Keyishian
• Shakespeare's Comedies and Romances by Margaret Mikesell
• Spanish Comedy by Nina Gerassi-Navarro and Raquel Medina-Banon
• Stand Up Comedy by Lawrence E. Mintz
• Television Sitcoms by Leo Charney
• Glossary
• About the Editor and Authors
• Index