And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python

by Kate Egan (Editor), Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Editor)

Overview

Examining Monty Python’s enduring status as an unconventional, anti-authoritarian comedy touchstone, this book reappraises Python’s comedy output from the perspective of its 50 years of cultural circulation. Reconsidering the group’s originality, impact and durability, a range of international scholars explores Python’s influences, production contexts, frequently controversial themes, and the cult status and forms of fandom associated with Python in the present day. From television sketches, including The Funniest Joke in the World, Hell’s Grannies, Dead Parrot and Confuse-a-Cat, to the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, to songs from the albums and live shows, this book is a ground-breaking critical analysis of the Monty Python phenomenon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474475167
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Dr Kate Egan is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at Northumbria University

Professor Jeffrey Weinstock is Professor of English at Central Michigan University

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Notes on contributors

Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘It’s… The Introduction’

PART I: SITUATING PYTHON

1. Rick Hudson, ‘Six Comics in Search of a …: Monty Python and Absurdist/Surrealist

Theatre’

2. Gina Wisker, ‘"‘None shall pass" and "The skull beneath the skin": Monty Python, the British Class System, and Death’

3. Anna Martonfi, ‘Der Ver Zwei Peanuts: Depictions of a Distant War in Monty Python’s Flying Circus’

PART II: PYTHON’S PRACTICES, FORMS AND MEDIUMS

4. James Leggott, ‘The Royal Philharmonic Goes to the Bathroom: The Music of Monty Python’

5. Paul Wells, ‘The Disruptive Metamorphoses of an Impish God: Gilliam's Satiric Animation’

6. Ewan Wilson, ‘Figures Traced in Shite: The Scribe, The Illuminator, and Monty Python’s Holy Grail’

PART III: CONTEXTS AND REPRESENTATIONS

7. Caroline Langhorst, ‘Grannies from Hell, Daring Bicycle Repairmen, Upper-Class Twits and "Make Tea Not Love": Monty Python’s Flying Circus and 1960s British (Popular) Culture’

8. Brett Mills, ‘The Parrot, the Albatross, and the Cat: Animals and Comedy in Monty

Python’

9. Kathleen J. Cassity, ‘"Political Correctness", Reversal, and Incongruity: Dynamics of Humour in Life of Brian’

PART IV: CULT, FANDOM AND PYTHON

10. Ernest Mathijs, ‘Philosophy, Absurdity, Waste and The Meaning of Life – A Cult Film, Of Sorts’

11. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘In Praise of Silliness: The Cult of Python’

12. Kate Egan, ‘Memories of Connecting: Fathers, Daughters and Intergenerational Monty Python Fandom’

Editorial Reviews

Fifty years on, And Now For Something Completely Different provides a timely retrospective on the troupe’s transformation from absurdist cult TV to global comedy lingua franca. Egan and Weinstock’s clutch of new scholarly perspectives effectively historicises Python in popular culture. As Pythonology goes, this is pretty much the full Monty.

Justin Smith

If you’re after a series of lively, insightful and highly accessible essays about every aspect of Monty Python – from its use of stock music to its representation of animals – then this book is completely and utterly for you.

Oliver Double

This outstanding collection finds innovative, compelling things to say about the global cult of Python. Exploring absurdism and gothic horror, music and animation, deceased parrots and ‘political correctness’, Egan and Weinstock have gathered together a brilliant troupe of scholars. Including a focus on cult comedy and fandom, And Now For Something Completely Different makes a real difference to our understandings of Monty Python.

Professor Matt Hills

A fresh and broad-ranging collection that both builds on existing work on Monty Python, and takes several new approaches. This will be an important contribution to the field.

Leon Hunt