The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern

Zusatztext

<i>The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern</i> argues that Sara Parton and her literary alter ego, Fanny Fern, occupy a star-power position within the antebellum literary marketplace dominated by women authors of sentimental fiction, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne (in)famously called the damn mob of scribbling women. The Fanny Fern persona represents a nineteenth-century woman voicing the modern feminine within a laughter-provoking bourgeois carnival, a forerunner of Hélène Cixouss laughing Medusa figure and her theory about<i>écriture féminine</i>. By advancing an innovative theory about an Anglo-American aesthetic, comic belles lettres, Caron explains the comic nuances of Partons persona, capable of both an amiable and a caustic satire. The book traces Partons burgeoning celebrity, analyzes her satires on cultural expectations of gendered behavior, and provides a close look at her variegated comic style. The book then makes two first-order conclusions: Parton not only offers a unique profile for antebellum women comic writers, but her Fanny Fern persona also anchors a potential genealogy of women comic writers and activists, down to the present day, who could fit Kate Clintons concept of<i>fumerism</i>, a feminist style of humor that fumes, that embraces the comic power of a Medusa satire.

Autorenportrait

<b>James E. Caron </b>is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawai¿i at M¿noa. In addition to publishing many articles on comic writers and comic artifacts, he has authored<i> Satire as the Comic Public Sphere: Postmodern "Truthiness" and Civic Engagement</i> (2021), and <i>Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter</i> (2008),<i> </i>as well as co-edited essays on Charlie Chaplin in <i>Refocusing Chaplin: A Screen Icon in Critical Contexts</i> (2013).

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