| Description |
1 online resource (xiii, 217 pages) |
| Series |
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture, 2634-6508 |
|
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture. 2634-6508
|
| Contents |
1 Introduction: Fanny Fern and the Mob of Scribbling Women -- 2 Sara Payson Willis Parton’s (Comic) Preacher, Fanny Fern -- 3. The Satirist and Her Public -- 4 Satirizing Gender Expectations: Fanny Fern as the Impossible Subject -- 5 Creating Comic Community: Scathing Epithets, Caricature, and Comic Violence -- 6 Constructing Fanny Fern as Satirist -- 7 Fanny Fern’s Significance in the American Comic Tradition |
| Summary |
The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern argues that Sara Parton and her literary alter ego, Fanny Fern, occupy a star-power position within the antebellum literary marketplace dominated by women authors of sentimental fiction, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne (in)famously called “the damn mob of scribbling women.” The Fanny Fern persona represents a nineteenth-century woman voicing the modern feminine within a laughter-provoking bourgeois carnival, a forerunner of Hélène Cixous’s laughing Medusa figure and her theory about écriture féminine. By advancing an innovative theory about an Anglo-American aesthetic, comic belles lettres, Caron explains the comic nuances of Parton’s persona, capable of both an amiable and a caustic satire. The book traces Parton’s burgeoning celebrity, analyzes her satires on cultural expectations of gendered behavior, and provides a close look at her variegated comic style. The book then makes two first-order conclusions: Parton not only offers a unique profile for antebellum women comic writers, but her Fanny Fern persona also anchors a potential genealogy of women comic writers and activists, down to the present day, who could fit Kate Clinton’s concept of fumerism, a feminist style of humor that fumes, that embraces the comic power of a Medusa satire |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed January 11, 2024) |
| Subject |
Fern, Fanny, 1811-1872 -- Criticism and interpretation
|
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Femininity in literature.
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American wit and humor -- 19th century -- History and criticism
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Wit and humor -- Women authors -- History and criticism
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9783031412769 |
|
3031412761 |
|
