Laughter [ Communication ]
… exposes the anxieties and aspirations inherent in sociability quite like laughter. Practices > Communication Keywords Humour Impoliteness Laughter Manners Politeness Taste Wit In May 1787, author-turned cleric Thomas Monro devoted an issue … trans. Anon. (London: J. Newbery and W. Nicoll, 1764), p. 14. In eighteenth-century intellectual circles, however, good humour and laughter were not simply a matter of superficial good manners; they were elevated as an essential prop to civil society. The third earl of Shaftesbury ’s essay, Sensus Communis, or an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour , was among the most prominent texts to make the case. For Shaftesbury, sociability needed ridicule and laughter: …
Humour | Impoliteness | Laughter | Manners | Politeness | Taste | Wit
Encyclopedia