Despite its unabated popularity with audiences slapstick has received rather little scholarly
attention mostly by scholars concentrating on the US theater and cinema traditions.
Nonetheless as a form of physical humor slapstick has a long history across various areas of
cultural production. This volume approaches slapstick both as a genre of situational physical
comedy and as a mode of communicating an affective situation captured in various cultural
products. Contributors to the volume examine cinematic literary dramatic musical and
photographic texts and performances. From medieval chivalric romance and nineteenth-century
theater to contemporary photography the contributors study treatments of slapstick across
media periods and geographic locations. The aim of a study of such wide scope is to
demonstrate how slapstick emerged from a variety of complex interactions among different
traditions and by extension to illustrate that slapstick can be highly productive for
interdisciplinary research.
