In bringing together Austen and comedy, which are both often dismissed as superfluous or irrelevant to a contemporary world, this collection of essays directs attention to the ways we laugh, the ways that Austen may make us do so, and the ways that our laughter is conditioned by the form in which Austen writes: comedy.

ERIN GOSS is an associate professor of English at Clemson University in South Carolina. She is the author of Revealing Bodies: Anatomy, Allegory, and the Grounds of Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Bucknell University Press).

Illustrations ... v
Abbreviations ... vi
Introduction: Austen and Comedy ... 1
Erin M. Goss
Part I. Comic Energy and Explosive Humor ... 27
One - Austen, Philosophy, and Comic Stylistics ... 28
Eric Lindstrom
Two - Jane Austen: Comedy Against Happiness ... 62
David Sigler
Three - "Open-Hearted": Persuasion and the Cultivation of Good Humor ... 95
Sean Dempsey
Part II. (Emma's) Laughter with a Purpose ... 121
Four - After the Laughter: Seeking Perfect Happiness in Emma ... 122
Soha Chung
Five - The Comic Visions of Emma Woodhouse ... 148
Timothy Erwin
Part III. Comedic Form, Comedic Effect ... 186
Six - On Austen, Comedy, and Future Possibility ... 187
Erin M. Goss
Seven - Lost in the Comedy: Austen's Paternalistic Men and the Problem of Accountability ...218
Michael Kramp
Eight - Sense, Sensibility, Sea Monsters, and Carnivalesque Caricature ... 248
Misty Krueger
Acknowledgments ... 272
Bibliography ... 273
Index ... 301
About the Contributors ... 302