These vivid portraits uncover a profound reason for the universal appeal of comedy.

Sudden Glory presents the history of one of the most evanescent but powerful forms of human expression - laughter. Here is the first book to look not at humor or comedy, but it laughter itself - and specifically at the way laughter evolved into an effective weapon for political subversion. Barry Sanders asks What did people laugh at? And why? What was the Church's attitude? The Rabbis'? Who could do it, when, and at whom? When did the joke first appear? Sudden Glory records the changes in attitudes toward laughter from the ancient world down to the present, with specific emphasis on cultural shifts from the late Middle Ages, when the Church's reach into the realm of the body was felt throughout society, through the end of the eighteenth century, when only deviants and derelicts laughed freely. Along the way, Sanders imagines the voices of women and peasants, whose laughter often went unrecorded, but surely not unheard. Sanders concludes with a brilliant chapter on contemporary laughter, beginning with "sick" comic Lenny Bruce (with whom he was personally acquainted), and ending with women stand-up comics, who seem to be finding their voices while male comics are mired in adolescent shtick. Sudden Glory, which contains an extensive bibliography on the subject of laughter, is an important study from one of our most penetrating and playful public intellectuals.

The role of the fool is to provoke the powerful to question their convictions, preferably while avoiding a beating. Fools accomplish this not by hectoring their audience, but by broaching sensitive topics indirectly, often disguising their message in a joke or a tale. Writers and thinkers throughout history have adopted the fool’s approach, and here Ralph Lerner turns to six of them—Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Robert Burton, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Gibbon—to elucidate the strategies these men employed to persuade the heedless, the zealous, and the overly confident to pause and reconsider. As Playing the Fool makes plain, all these men lived through periods marked by fanaticism, particularly with regard to religion and its relation to the state. In such a troubled context, advocating on behalf of skepticism and against tyranny could easily lead to censure, or even, as in More’s case, execution. And so, Lerner reveals, these serious thinkers relied on humor to move their readers toward a more reasoned understanding of the world and our place in it. At once erudite and entertaining, Playing the Fool is an eloquently thought-provoking look at the lives and writings of these masterly authors.

An examination of comedy and feminism in the works of early women British novelists.

Austen'sUnbecomingConjunctions is a contemporary study of all Jane Austen's writings focusing on her representation of women, sexuality, the material objects, and linguistic patterns by which this sexuality was expressed. Heydt-Stevenson demonstrates the subtle, vulgar, and humorous ways Austen uses human bodies, objects, and activities (fashion, jewelry, crafts, popular literature, travel and tourism, money, and courtship rituals) to convey sexuality and sexual appetites. Through the sexual subtext, Heydt-Stevenson proposes, Austen satirized contemporary sexual hypocrisy; overcame the stereotypes of women authors as sexually inhibited, sheltered, or repressed; and addressed as sophisticated and worldly an audience as Byron's. Thus through her careful reading of all the Austen texts in light of the language of eroticism, both traditional and contemporary, Heydt-Stevenson re-evaluates Austen's audience, the novels, and her role as a writer.

Exploring feminist social media tactics that use humor and laughter as a form of resistance to misogyny, rewiring feelings of shame into shamelessness. Online sexism, hate, and harassment aim to silence women through shaming and fear. In Who's Laughing Now? Jenny Sundén and Susanna Paasonen examine a somewhat counterintuitive form of resistance: humor. Sundén and Paasonen argue that feminist social media tactics that use humor, laughter, and a sense of the absurd to answer name-calling, offensive language, and unsolicited dick pics can reroute and rewire shame into a self-assured shamelessness.

A radical new approach to humor, where traditional targets become its agents Humor is often dismissed as cruel ridicule or harmless fun. But what if laughter is a vital force to channel rage against patriarchy, Islamophobia, or mass incarceration? To create moments of empathy and dialogue between Black Lives Matter and the police? These and other such questions are at the heart of this powerful reassessment of humor. Placing theorists in conversation with comedians, Uproarious offers a full-frontal approach to the very foundation of comedy and its profound political impact. Here Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett address the four major theories of humor--superiority, relief, incongruity, and social play--through the lens of feminist and game-changing comics such as Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Hannah Gadsby, Hari Kondabolu, and Tig Notaro. They take a radical and holistic approach to the understanding of humor, particularly of humor deployed by those from groups long relegated to the margins, and propose a powerful new understanding of humor as a force that can engender politically progressive social movements. Drawing on a range of cross-disciplinary sources, from philosophies and histories of humor to the psychology and physiology of laughter to animal studies, Uproarious offers a richer understanding of the political and cathartic potential of humor. A major new contribution to a wider dialogue on comedy, Uproarious grounds for us explorations of outsider humor and our golden age of feminist comics--showing that when women, prisoners, even animals, laugh back, comedy along with belly laughs forge new identities and alter the political climate.