Using examples from personally recorded conversations, Delia Chiaro examines the structure of jokes, quips, riddles and asides. She explores degrees of conformity to and deviation from established conventions; the tellability of jokes, and the interpretative role of the listener; the creative use of puns, word play and discourse. The emphasis in her analysis is on sociocultural contexts for the production and reception of jokes, and she examines the extent to which jokes are both universal in their appeal, and specific to a particular culture.

'Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style is so important: complex and remarkably lucid, it's the first book dealing with punk to offer intellectual content. Hebdige ...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling Stone

With enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines...

This focused collection of essays explores the multiple possiblities for the study of Shakespeare in an emerging postcolonial period. It examines the extent to which our assumption about key terms such as colonization, race, and nation derive from early modern English culture. It also looks at how such terms are themselves affected by what was established subsequently as colonial forms of knowledge. The volume features original work by some of the leading critics within the field of Shakespeare studies, including: Andreas Bertoldi; Jerry Brotton; Jonathan Burton; Jonathan Dollimore; Terence...

There are many 'Shakespeares', argue the contributors to this, the second volume of Alternative Shakespeares and the different versions emerge in a wide variety of cultural contexts: race, gender, sexuality and politics amongst others. Alternative Shakespeares: Volume 2 consists of entirely new essays by some of the world's leading Shakespearean critics. The topics covered include: Sexuality and Gender, Language and Power, Textualilty and Printing, Race and Shakespeare's Britain, New Historicist Criticism and the 'Gaze' of the Audience. In abandoning the search for any final and definitive...

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In a society where a comic equates with knockabout amusment for children, the sudden pre-eminence of adult comics, on everything from political satire to erotic fantasy, has predictably attracted an enormous amount of attention. Adult comics are part of the cultural landscape in a way that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. In this first survey of its kind, Roger Sabin traces the history of comics for older readers from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. He takes in the pioneering titles pre-First World War, the underground 'comix' of the 1960s and 1970s, 'fandom' in...

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.