Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century

A Rollicking Review Of Popular Culture In 18th Century Britain This Text Turns Away From Sentimental And Polite Literature To Focus Instead On The Jestbooks, Farces, Comic Periodicals Variety Shows And Minor Comic Novels That Portray A Society In Which No Subject Was Taboo And Political Correctness Unimagined. Introduction: The Unsentimental Eighteenth Century, 1740-70 -- Jestbooks And The Indifference To Reform -- Nasty Jokes, Polite Women -- How To Be A Wit -- Cripples, Hunchbacks, And The Limits Of Sympathy -- Epigrams And Literary Freaks -- Dancing Cripples -- Everyday Laughter: Evidence -- Damaged Lives: Experience -- Body Determinism -- Delights Of Privilege -- Laughing At The Lower Orders -- Caveats From Social History -- High Jinks And Violent Freedoms -- Lovelace At The Haberdasher -- Joseph Andrews And The Great Laughter Debate -- Narrative From A High Horse -- Fielding's Anatomy Of Laughter -- The Problem With Parsons -- Adams And The Enemies Of Fun -- Rape Jokes And The Law -- Laughter And Disbelief -- Functions Of An Assault -- Accusations, Remedies, And Local Justice -- Humors Of The Old Bailey -- In Conclusion: The Forgotten Best Sellers Of Early English Fiction -- Ramble Novels And Slum Realism -- Reading For The Filler -- Unsentimental Readers And Literary History. Simon Dickie. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.