Examining the evolution of American film comedy since the beginning of the sound era (c. 1930), Christopher Beach focuses on how language, class, and social relationships in early sound comedies by the Marx Brothers, the screwball comedies of the 1930s by Capra, Sturges and others, and 1950s comedies of Frank Tashlin and Vincente Minnelli, and contemporary films by Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, and the Coen brothers. Beach argues that sound and narrative expanded the semiotic and ideological potential of a film, providing moments of genuine social critique and also mass entertainment....

Intended as a concise but thorough introduction to the various movements of twentieth century American poets, this book will help readers understand and analyze modern and contemporary poems. It covers the work of major modernists such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the New Critics, the Confessionals, and the Beats.

Intended as a concise but thorough introduction to the various movements of twentieth century American poets, this book will help readers understand and analyze modern and contemporary poems. It covers the work of major modernists such as Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and Marianne Moore, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the New Critics, the Confessionals, and the Beats.

This title analyzes the films and filmmaking career of director Hal Ashby, placing his work in the cultural context of filmmaking in the 1970s.