In the critical tradition, Jane Austen has long been considered a conservative writer, whose novels emphasize the importance of manners and propriety. This study, however, continues a more recent trend in Austen Scholarship, one that focuses on her feminism. It breaks new ground by identifying, as one ingredient in her fiction, an iconoclastic laughter that is closer to popular gaiety than to the elitist ironic stance of many of her predecessors. Furthermore, it underlines the presence of conflict in her narrative and points to the disruptive speech reported in Austen's elegant, hyper-correct sentences. Working with three of Austen's novels - Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Emma - the study analyzes the elements of feminist carnival in her prose.

A novel of the civil war in Lebanon whose protagonist is a homosexual trying to remain neutral. But as he discovers, neutrality in a civil war is not possible. He becomes involved like everyone else and is the better man for the experience gained. The novel won an award in Lebanon.

Jane Austen's stock in the popular marketplace has never been higher, while academic studies continue to uncover new aspects of her engagement with her world. This fully updated edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Companion offers clear, accessible coverage of the intricacies of Austen's works in their historical context, with biographical information and suggestions for further reading. Major scholars address Austen's six novels, the letters and other works, in terms accessible to students and the many general readers, as well as to academics. With seven new essays, the Companion now covers topics that have become central to recent Austen studies, for example, gender, sociability, economics, and the increasing number of screen adaptations of the novels.

Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.

An examination of comedy and feminism in the works of early women British novelists.

This book identifies the significance of the body through a feminist reconceptualisation of laughter as a means of insight. It positions itself within the emerging scholarship on religion and humour but distinguishes itself by moving away from the emphasis on humour and instead focuses on the place and role of laughter. Through a feminist reading of laughter, which is grounded in the philosophical and psychological works of William James, this book emphasises the importance of the body to offer an exploration of laughter as a means of insight. In doing so, it challenges the classificatory orders of knowledge by recognising and arguing for the value of the body in the creation of knowledge and understanding. To demonstrate the centrality of the body for insight laughter, and thus the creation of knowledge, this book engages with laughter within three thematic areas: religious experience, gendered experiences of laughter, and the ethics of laughter. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in religious studies, theology, gender studies, humour studies, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

Laughter After will appeal to a number of audiences—from students and scholars of Jewish and Holocaust studies to academics and general readers with an interest in media and performance studies.