Neo-Victorian humour : comic subversions and unlaughter in contemporary historical re-visions
This volume highlights humour?s crucial role in shaping historical re-visions of the long nineteenth century, through modes ranging from subtle irony, camp excess, ribald farce, and aesthetic parody to blackly comic narrative games. It analyses neo-Victorian humour?s politicisation, its ideological functions and ethical implications across varied media, including fiction, drama, film, webcomics, and fashion. Contemporary humour maps the assumed distance between postmodernity and its targeted nineteenth-century referents only to repeatedly collapse the same in a seemingly self-defeating nihilistic project. This collection explores how neo-Victorian humour generates empathy and effective socio-political critique, dispensing symbolic justice, but also risks recycling the past?s invidious ideologies under the politically correct guise of comic debunking, even to the point of negating laughter itself
eBook, English, 2017
Brill, Leiden, 2017