"This reference classic has approximately doubled in size since its last publication 20 years ago, and the expansion involves more than the thorough revision and addition of articles about music of the past. More articles about 20th-century composers and composer-performers have been added, as well as topical articles about the gender-related, multicultural, and interdisciplinary ways that music is now being studied. Add to these changes that New Grove is also available online, making it a source that would have made its many-faceted creator Sir George Grove proud"--Outstanding reference sources, American Libraries, May 2002.

Despite its unabated popularity with audiences, slapstick has received rather little scholarly attention, mostly by scholars concentrating on the US theater and cinema traditions. Nonetheless, as a form of physical humor slapstick has a long history across various areas of cultural production. This volume approaches slapstick both as a genre of situational physical comedy and as a mode of communicating an affective situation captured in various cultural products. Contributors to the volume examine cinematic, literary, dramatic, musical, and photographic texts and performances. From medieval chivalric romance and nineteenth-century theater to contemporary photography, the contributors study treatments of slapstick across media, periods and geographic locations. The aim of a study of such wide scope is to demonstrate how slapstick emerged from a variety of complex interactions among different traditions and by extension, to illustrate that slapstick can be highly productive for interdisciplinary research.