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E-book
Author Beale, Sam, author

Title The comedy and legacy of music-hall women 1880-1920 : brazen impudence and boisterous vulgarity / Sam Beale
Published Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]
©2020

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Description 1 online resource (xxii, 289 pages : illustrations (black and white))
Series Palgrave studies in comedy
Palgrave studies in comedy.
Contents Introduction: Reweaving Women's Comic Performance History -- Sentiments Unwomanly and Unnatural: Moral Ambiguity, Censorship and Public Perceptions of the Serio-Comic Performer -- I Must Tell You This: Intimacy, Gagging and Comic Licence in Performer-Audience Relationships -- A Comfort and Blessing to Man: Performed Irony and Comic Disruptions of Gender Stereotypes -- I've Only Got Myself to Blame: The Victims and Butts of Women's Comic Self-Deprecation -- I Mustn't Tell You What I Mean: Comic Innuendo as Performed Censorship -- Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its Own: The Comic Embodiment of Gender, Sexuality and the Grotesque -- Serio-Comic Reflections and Projections
Summary This book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880-1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female 'serio-comic, the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Women comedians -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
Women comedians -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Women comedians
Great Britain
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783030479411
3030479412