Age of Irreverence

Christopher Rea is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the editor of Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays by Qian Zhongshu and the coeditor of The Business of Culture: Cultural Entrepreneurs in China and Southeast Asia, 1900-60.

• Executive Preface Acknowledgments 1. Breaking into Laughter 2. Jokes 3. Play 4. Mockery 5. Farce 6. The Invention of Humor Epilogue Appendix 1: Selected Chinese Humor Collections, 1900--1937 Appendix 2: Which Classic? Editions and Paratexts Abbreviations Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

"Rea provides a map to a diverse comedic terrain between the late Qing dynasty and the Year of Humor (1933) that is richly populated with 'whimsical poets, vaudevillian entrepreneurs, renowned revilers, twee essayists, winking farceurs, and self-promoting jokesters'." -- Joe Sample China Quarterly "[An] excellent study." -- Paul Bevan SOAS Bulletin "Not only does The Age of Irreverence o?ffer an engaging new take on the cultural history of a momentous period, it also raises a number of leads for future research." Journal of Oriental Studies "The Age of Irreverence devotes meticulous attention to primary sources, and crafts its findings into a narrative of humor in popular culture from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1930s, with a nod in the epilogue toward the socialist era and beyond. As a scholarly intervention, however, the book's central argument most directly targets not history, but literary studies... certain to engage an audience." Frontiers of Literary Studies in China "Beautifully written... Rea has managed to write a very scholarly but nevertheless interesting and even entertaining book about a subject of considerable importance that has been neglected by literary scholars." Israeli Journal of Humor Research Abounds with examples and provides a learned apparatus... informative. Monumenta Serica