British laughter and humor in the long 18th century

Abstract This essay offers an overview of recent scholarship on British humor, satire, comedy, and laughter in the long 18th century. It focuses on scholarship that asks what provoked laughter in the 18th century, how the ethics and morals of laughter were gauged and contested, and what the political and social effects of laughter were, particularly in the context of cultural change and political crisis. Studies of laughter and humor demonstrate that 18th‐century British culture was, in many ways, not characterized by codes of politeness and sociability. Satiric laughter proved a potent but unpredictable political instrument, particularly in cases of anti‐religious humor, as likely to undermine or exceed humor's political objectives as it was to realize them. Laughter also generated new publics that wrested moral authority from traditional seats of power. Humor's effects were as multitudinous as the formal and rhetorical techniques it employed to generate feeling in readers and audiences, and the field has benefitted from a variety of methodologies and critical frameworks to explore its complex cultural and political functions.