Beschreibung
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 Cixouss 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 Partons persona, capable of both an amiable and a caustic satire. The book traces Partons 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 Clintons concept of fumerism, a feminist style of humor that fumes, that embraces the comic power of a Medusa satire.
Autorenporträt
James E. Caron is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii at Mnoa. In addition to publishing many articles on comic writers and comic artifacts, he has authored Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern Truthiness and Civic Engagement (2021), and Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter (2008), as well as co-edited essays on Charlie Chaplin in Refocusing Chaplin: A Screen Icon in Critical Contexts (2013).
Herstellerkennzeichnung:
Springer Verlag GmbH
Tiergartenstr. 17
69121 Heidelberg
DE
E-Mail: juergen.hartmann@springer.com
