Ridicule, Religion and the Politics of Wit in Augustan England

Arguing for wit's importance beyond its use as a literary device, Lund traces the process by which writers in Restoration and eighteenth-century England struggled to define an appropriate role for wit in the public sphere. He shows how fear of wit as a subversive rhetorical form threatening church and state resulted in attacks on heterodox writers, the Restoration stage and new communal venues such as coffee houses and clubs.