Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender Genre Parody Gender and Culture Series Pre-Owned Hardcover 0231148046 9780231148047 Carolyn Williams

This is a Pre-Owned book. All our books are in Good or better condition. Format: Hardcover Author: Carolyn Williams ISBN10: 0231148046 ISBN13: 9780231148047 Long before the satirical comedy of The Daily Showand The Colbert Report the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were the hottest send-ups of the days political and cultural obsessions. Gilbert and Sullivans productions always rose to the level of social commentary despite being impertinent absurd or inane. Some viewers may take them straight but what looks like sexism or stereotype was actually a clever strategy of critique. Parody was a powerful weapon in the culture wars of late nineteenth-century England and with defiantly in-your-face sophistication Gilbert and Sullivan proved popular culture could be intellectually as well as politically challenging.Carolyn Williams underscores Gilbert and Sullivans creative and acute understanding of cultural formations. Anxiety drives the troubled mind in the nightmare patter song of Iolanthe and is vividly realized in the sexual and economic phrasing of Lord Chancellors lyrics. The modern body appears automated and performative in the railway song of Thespis mirroring Charlie Chaplins factory worker in the film Modern Times. Williams also illuminates the use of magic in The Sorcerer the parody of nautical melodrama in H.M.S. Pinafore the ridicule of Victorian poetry in Patience the autoethnography of The Mikado the role of gender in Trial by Jury and the theme of illegitimacy in The Pirates of Penzance.