Marie-Luise Kohlke, Ph.D. (2000) is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Swansea University and General/Founding Editor of Neo-Victorian Studies (http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/). Besides her series co-editorship of Brill | Rodopi’s Neo-Victorian Series, she has published numerous chapters and articles, most recently in Victoriographies.Christian Gutleben, Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of English literature at the university of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) where he is also the chief editor of the journal Cycnos. He has published several monographs and many papers on contemporary fiction and film and is the series co-editor of Brill | Rodopis’s Neo-Victorian Series.

"This rich and innovative collection invites us to reflect on the complex and various deployments of humour in neo-Victorian texts, where its consumers may wish at times that they could swallow back the laughter a scene or event provokes. It covers a range of approaches to humour utilised by neo-Victorian writers, dramatists, graphic novelists and filmmakers – including the deliberately and pompously unfunny, the traumatic, the absurd, the ribald, and the frankly distasteful – producing a richly satisfying anthology of innovative readings of ‘canonical’ neo-Victorian texts as well as those which are potential generic outliers. The collection explores what is funny in the neo-Victorian and who we are laughing at – the Victorians, as we like to imagine them, or ourselves, in ways we rarely acknowledge? This is a celebration of the parodic playfulness of a wide range of texts, from fiction to fashion, whilst offering a trenchant critique of the politics of postmodern laughter that will appeal to those working in adaptation studies, gender and queer studies, as well as literary and cultural studies more generally." – Prof. Imelda Whelehan, University of Tasmania, Australia“Kohlke & Gutleben’s collection of essays is a valuable addition to the existing researchon neo-Victorian fiction and culture, particularly as it is the first work dealing with irony,humour and comedy in neo-Victorianism. Moreover, most chapters included in the book offerinterpretations of neo-Victorian cultural texts that have so far enjoyed little scholarly attention.The introduction authored by the editors is especially significant, as it provides an overviewof the ideological tensions inherent to neo-Victorian fiction and the role humour plays in thisgenre, which is innovative in the field of neo-Victorian studies. Its fresh perspective on the ideological agendas and incongruities of neo-Victorian fiction is particularly inspiring for further research in neo-Victorianism and postmodernism.”-Barbara Braid, Institute of English, Szczecin University, in European Journal of Humour Research Vol.6, No. 3, pp.113-118 (2018)

• What’s So Funny about the Nineteenth Century?Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian GutlebenPART IHumour and Metanarratives1.Parody after Providence: Christianity, Secularism, and the Form of Neo-Victorian FictionMiriam Elizabeth Burstein2.Neo-Victorian Killing Humour: Laughing at Death in the Opium WarsMarie-Luise Kohlke3.‘Bleak Hilarity’ in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of BeautyDana Shiller4.Drainage in a Time of Cholera: History and Humour in Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames Michael L. RossPART IIHumour and Gender5.Looking at Victorian Fashion: Not a Laughing MatterMargaret D. Stetz6.Neo-Victorian Feminist History and the Political Potential of HumourTara MacDonald7.Good Vibrations: Hysteria, Female Orgasm and Medical Humour in Neo-Victorianism Monika Pietrzak-Franger and Eckart Voigts8.“People keep giving me rings, but I think a small death ray might be more practical”: Women and Mad Science in Steampunk Comics Dru PagliassottiPART IIIHumour and Postmodernism:9.“Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!”: The Neo-Victorian Novel-as-Mashup and the Limits of Postmodern Irony Megen de Bruin-Molé10.Camp Heritage: Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm as Neo-Victorian Heritage Spectacle Christophe Van Eecke11.Laughing (at) Freaks: “Bending the tune to her will” in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus and Rosie Garland’s The Palace of Curiosities Saverio Tomaiuolo12.The Dog Days of Empire: Black Humour and the Bestial in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur Ryan D. FongContributorsIndex

Marie-Luise Kohlke, Ph.D. (2000) is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Swansea University and General/Founding Editor of Neo-Victorian Studies (http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/). Besides her series co-editorship of Brill | Rodopi’s Neo-Victorian Series, she has published numerous chapters and articles, most recently in Victoriographies.Christian Gutleben, Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of English literature at the university of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) where he is also the chief editor of the journal Cycnos. He has published several monographs and many papers on contemporary fiction and film and is the series co-editor of Brill | Rodopis’s Neo-Victorian Series.

"This rich and innovative collection invites us to reflect on the complex and various deployments of humour in neo-Victorian texts, where its consumers may wish at times that they could swallow back the laughter a scene or event provokes. It covers a range of approaches to humour utilised by neo-Victorian writers, dramatists, graphic novelists and filmmakers – including the deliberately and pompously unfunny, the traumatic, the absurd, the ribald, and the frankly distasteful – producing a richly satisfying anthology of innovative readings of ‘canonical’ neo-Victorian texts as well as those which are potential generic outliers. The collection explores what is funny in the neo-Victorian and who we are laughing at – the Victorians, as we like to imagine them, or ourselves, in ways we rarely acknowledge? This is a celebration of the parodic playfulness of a wide range of texts, from fiction to fashion, whilst offering a trenchant critique of the politics of postmodern laughter that will appeal to those working in adaptation studies, gender and queer studies, as well as literary and cultural studies more generally." – Prof. Imelda Whelehan, University of Tasmania, Australia“Kohlke & Gutleben’s collection of essays is a valuable addition to the existing researchon neo-Victorian fiction and culture, particularly as it is the first work dealing with irony,humour and comedy in neo-Victorianism. Moreover, most chapters included in the book offerinterpretations of neo-Victorian cultural texts that have so far enjoyed little scholarly attention.The introduction authored by the editors is especially significant, as it provides an overviewof the ideological tensions inherent to neo-Victorian fiction and the role humour plays in thisgenre, which is innovative in the field of neo-Victorian studies. Its fresh perspective on the ideological agendas and incongruities of neo-Victorian fiction is particularly inspiring for further research in neo-Victorianism and postmodernism.”-Barbara Braid, Institute of English, Szczecin University, in European Journal of Humour Research Vol.6, No. 3, pp.113-118 (2018)

• What’s So Funny about the Nineteenth Century?Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian GutlebenPART IHumour and Metanarratives1.Parody after Providence: Christianity, Secularism, and the Form of Neo-Victorian FictionMiriam Elizabeth Burstein2.Neo-Victorian Killing Humour: Laughing at Death in the Opium WarsMarie-Luise Kohlke3.‘Bleak Hilarity’ in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of BeautyDana Shiller4.Drainage in a Time of Cholera: History and Humour in Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames Michael L. RossPART IIHumour and Gender5.Looking at Victorian Fashion: Not a Laughing MatterMargaret D. Stetz6.Neo-Victorian Feminist History and the Political Potential of HumourTara MacDonald7.Good Vibrations: Hysteria, Female Orgasm and Medical Humour in Neo-Victorianism Monika Pietrzak-Franger and Eckart Voigts8.“People keep giving me rings, but I think a small death ray might be more practical”: Women and Mad Science in Steampunk Comics Dru PagliassottiPART IIIHumour and Postmodernism:9.“Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!”: The Neo-Victorian Novel-as-Mashup and the Limits of Postmodern Irony Megen de Bruin-Molé10.Camp Heritage: Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm as Neo-Victorian Heritage Spectacle Christophe Van Eecke11.Laughing (at) Freaks: “Bending the tune to her will” in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus and Rosie Garland’s The Palace of Curiosities Saverio Tomaiuolo12.The Dog Days of Empire: Black Humour and the Bestial in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur Ryan D. FongContributorsIndex

Marie-Luise Kohlke, Ph.D. (2000) is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Swansea University and General/Founding Editor of Neo-Victorian Studies (http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/). Besides her series co-editorship of Brill | Rodopi’s Neo-Victorian Series, she has published numerous chapters and articles, most recently in Victoriographies.Christian Gutleben, Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of English literature at the university of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) where he is also the chief editor of the journal Cycnos. He has published several monographs and many papers on contemporary fiction and film and is the series co-editor of Brill | Rodopis’s Neo-Victorian Series.

"This rich and innovative collection invites us to reflect on the complex and various deployments of humour in neo-Victorian texts, where its consumers may wish at times that they could swallow back the laughter a scene or event provokes. It covers a range of approaches to humour utilised by neo-Victorian writers, dramatists, graphic novelists and filmmakers – including the deliberately and pompously unfunny, the traumatic, the absurd, the ribald, and the frankly distasteful – producing a richly satisfying anthology of innovative readings of ‘canonical’ neo-Victorian texts as well as those which are potential generic outliers. The collection explores what is funny in the neo-Victorian and who we are laughing at – the Victorians, as we like to imagine them, or ourselves, in ways we rarely acknowledge? This is a celebration of the parodic playfulness of a wide range of texts, from fiction to fashion, whilst offering a trenchant critique of the politics of postmodern laughter that will appeal to those working in adaptation studies, gender and queer studies, as well as literary and cultural studies more generally." – Prof. Imelda Whelehan, University of Tasmania, Australia“Kohlke & Gutleben’s collection of essays is a valuable addition to the existing researchon neo-Victorian fiction and culture, particularly as it is the first work dealing with irony,humour and comedy in neo-Victorianism. Moreover, most chapters included in the book offerinterpretations of neo-Victorian cultural texts that have so far enjoyed little scholarly attention.The introduction authored by the editors is especially significant, as it provides an overviewof the ideological tensions inherent to neo-Victorian fiction and the role humour plays in thisgenre, which is innovative in the field of neo-Victorian studies. Its fresh perspective on the ideological agendas and incongruities of neo-Victorian fiction is particularly inspiring for further research in neo-Victorianism and postmodernism.”-Barbara Braid, Institute of English, Szczecin University, in European Journal of Humour Research Vol.6, No. 3, pp.113-118 (2018)

• What’s So Funny about the Nineteenth Century?Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian GutlebenPART IHumour and Metanarratives1.Parody after Providence: Christianity, Secularism, and the Form of Neo-Victorian FictionMiriam Elizabeth Burstein2.Neo-Victorian Killing Humour: Laughing at Death in the Opium WarsMarie-Luise Kohlke3.‘Bleak Hilarity’ in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of BeautyDana Shiller4.Drainage in a Time of Cholera: History and Humour in Matthew Kneale’s Sweet Thames Michael L. RossPART IIHumour and Gender5.Looking at Victorian Fashion: Not a Laughing MatterMargaret D. Stetz6.Neo-Victorian Feminist History and the Political Potential of HumourTara MacDonald7.Good Vibrations: Hysteria, Female Orgasm and Medical Humour in Neo-Victorianism Monika Pietrzak-Franger and Eckart Voigts8.“People keep giving me rings, but I think a small death ray might be more practical”: Women and Mad Science in Steampunk Comics Dru PagliassottiPART IIIHumour and Postmodernism:9.“Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!”: The Neo-Victorian Novel-as-Mashup and the Limits of Postmodern Irony Megen de Bruin-Molé10.Camp Heritage: Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm as Neo-Victorian Heritage Spectacle Christophe Van Eecke11.Laughing (at) Freaks: “Bending the tune to her will” in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus and Rosie Garland’s The Palace of Curiosities Saverio Tomaiuolo12.The Dog Days of Empire: Black Humour and the Bestial in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur Ryan D. FongContributorsIndex