<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> Are humour and laughter gender-specific? The simple answer, like most everything that is ideological, is “yes”. Many feminists in recent years have grappled with the question of humour and how it is often the site of much contestation when it comes to women using it as a tool of transgression. This paper probes the seemingly timeless antipathy between humour and representations of femininity through recourse to performance and theories of the body. This article holds the term “woman” up to scrutiny while simultaneously examining the persistence of both critical and philosophical recalcitrance and the way humour continues to function in both gendered and violent ways. How does gender “do” or “undo” humour? Laughter is no simple matter for women, due to the legacy of profoundly polarized and hyper-sexualized historical ambivalence between femininity and laughter. Acknowledging the problematic nature of the category “woman”, and after clearing some terminological distinctions (comedy, humour, irony, satire, and parody), this article investigates humour’s complicated and volatile relationship to gender and the way the laughing body of women on stage presents a fascinating double helix of sexual aggression and power</p></abstract>

Are humour and laughter gender-specific? The simple answer, like most everything that is ideological, is “yes”. Many feminists in recent years have grappled with the question of humour and how it is often the site of much contestation when it comes to women using it as a tool of transgression. This paper probes the seemingly timeless antipathy between humour and representations of femininity through recourse to performance and theories of the body. This article holds the term “woman” up to scrutiny while simultaneously examining the persistence of both critical and philosophical recalcitrance and the way humour continues to function in both gendered and violent ways. How does gender “do” or “undo” humour? Laughter is no simple matter for women, due to the legacy of profoundly polarized and hyper-sexualized historical ambivalence between femininity and laughter. Acknowledging the problematic nature of the category “woman”, and after clearing some terminological distinctions (comedy, humour, irony, satire, and parody), this article investigates humour’s complicated and volatile relationship to gender and the way the laughing body of women on stage presents a fascinating double helix of sexual aggression and power

Gender, Humour and Transgression in Canadian Women’s Theatre

Prague Journal of English Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Gender, Humour and Transgression in Canadian Women\u2019s Theatre"}

Are humour and laughter gender-specific? The simple answer, like most everything that is ideological, is “yes”. Many feminists in recent years have grappled...

Gender, Humour and Transgression in Canadian Women’s Theatre

Published Online: Sep 25, 2014

Page range: 47 - 63

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2014-0017

Keywords
Feminism, parody, humour, performance, Canadian Theatre, laughter, essentialism, gender

© Faculty of Education, Charles University

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Gender, Humour and Transgression in Canadian Women’s Theatre

Published Online: Sep 25, 2014

Page range: 47 - 63

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2014-0017

KeywordsFeminism, parody, humour, performance, Canadian Theatre, laughter, essentialism, gender

© Faculty of Education, Charles University

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Feminism, parody, humour, performance, Canadian Theatre, laughter, essentialism, gender