المستخلص: |
This paper seeks to demonstrate that in many contemporary women’s writings the subversive and disruptive role of laughter, its shifting boundaries, and its binding and essential relation to freedom (Mikhail Bakhtin), provide access to a territory in which gender, identity, sexuality, language, and social experience in everyday life can be ingeniously explored. In order to create an authentic “alternative version” of their stories, American women writers of comic narratives, namely Terry McMillan, Nora Ephron, Erica Jong, and Lorrie Moore, believe that the productive and creative use of laughter can be expressive and inclusive of women’s experience. Laughter dissipates the power of a hostile reality, gives women a strong and unifying bond, and expresses the power of women’s growing sense of autonomy.
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