Despite its unabated popularity, slapstick has received rather peripheral scholarly attention, mostly concentrating on the US theatre and cinema traditions. Nonetheless, slapstick, as a form of physical humor, stands positioned in a long history across various areas of cultural production. This volume presents approaches to slapstick which view it both as a genre of situational physical comedy and as a mode of communicating an affective situation as captured in various cultural products. Here, contributors to the volume examine cinematic, literary, dramatic, musical, and photographic texts and performances. From medieval chivalric romance, to the nineteenth-century theater, to contemporary photography, the contributors study various medial treatments of slapstick across periods and geographic locations. The aim of such wide scope is to illustrate how slapstick can be highly productive for interdisciplinary research. Consequently, contributions to the volume demonstrate how slapstick emerged from a variety of complex interactions among various traditions. weiterlesen