Description

Book Synopsis
Dealing with the forgotten comic literature of eighteenth-century Britain, this book uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy.

Trade Review
"Placing Fielding, the greatest humourist of his time, back amongst his contemporaries and responding to the comedy of his writing as his first readers would have done is a masterly stroke in this scholarly, original and highly readable book." (Literary Review) "A brilliant and beautifully written book, Cruelty and Laughter introduces its readers to a world of violent mayhem, both rhetorical and real.... Such is the transformative experience of reading this book that I, for one, will never look at the mid-eighteenth century again in quite the same way." (H-Net Reviews) "Dickie mounts a compelling case against what he calls 'the politeness-sensibility paradigm,' by resurrecting a jeering counter-discourse that reveled in human suffering and physical affliction." (London Review of Books)"

Cruelty and Laughter Forgotten Comic Literature

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    A Paperback / softback by Simon Dickie

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      Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
      Publication Date: 14/04/2014
      ISBN13: 9780226142548, 978-0226142548
      ISBN10: 022614254X
      Also in:
      Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Dealing with the forgotten comic literature of eighteenth-century Britain, this book uncovers a rich vein of cruel humor beneath the surface of Enlightenment civility that forces us to recognize just how slowly ordinary human sufferings became worthy of sympathy.

      Trade Review
      "Placing Fielding, the greatest humourist of his time, back amongst his contemporaries and responding to the comedy of his writing as his first readers would have done is a masterly stroke in this scholarly, original and highly readable book." (Literary Review) "A brilliant and beautifully written book, Cruelty and Laughter introduces its readers to a world of violent mayhem, both rhetorical and real.... Such is the transformative experience of reading this book that I, for one, will never look at the mid-eighteenth century again in quite the same way." (H-Net Reviews) "Dickie mounts a compelling case against what he calls 'the politeness-sensibility paradigm,' by resurrecting a jeering counter-discourse that reveled in human suffering and physical affliction." (London Review of Books)"

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