Deadpan and the Nineteenth-Century Emergence of a Comic Style
Sarah Balkin(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Will be published approx. on 31. January 2027
Book
Hardback
278 pages
978-1-009-76416-2 (ISBN)
Description
When the term 'deadpan' first appeared during the early twentieth century, it meant 'expressionless face. Sarah Balkin upends received wisdom in this original study of deadpan's emergence, which takes the vaudeville era as an endpoint rather than a beginning. Drawing on examples from Britain, the United States, and Australia, she investigates deadpan's earlier history in theater, comic opera, lecture culture, minstrelsy, cakewalking, burlesque, and vaudeville. In doing so, she reveals the terms performance makers, audiences, and critics used to describe deadpan before the style was named. She shows how deadpan mimicked and parodied socially central values and attitudes to make audiences laugh during a period better known for earnestness and self-control. She also explores how classed, racialized, and gendered comic conventions shifted across cultural contexts. This is the untold story of how deadpan became legible to audiences.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-76416-2 (9781009764162)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sarah Balkin is Senior Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne, where she researches historical and contemporary comic performance. Her books include Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage (2019) and Comedy and Controversy: Scripting Public Speech (co-authored with Marc Mierowsky, Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Content
Introduction: deadpan avant la letter; 1. Victorian deadpan as comic earnestness; 2. No politics?: Artemus Ward's comic lectures; 3. Transnational mediations: lecture culture and national humor in print; 4. Institutional style: H. M. S. Pinafore in colonial Australia; 5. Smiling deadpan: the cakewalk and Black minstrelsy; 6. Talking women: Gypsy Rose Lee; 7. Patter: content and style; Epilogue: deadpan after deadpan.