In this episode, Robin Mills talks to Dr Ross Carroll about his recently
published book Uncivil Mirth – Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain
(Princeton, 2021). Ross Carroll examines how leading Enlightenment thinkers
thought about the purpose, possibilities and limits of public discourse in
their search for an acceptable form of ridicule, one that supported
religious toleration, the abolition of the slave trade, and the dismantling
of patriarchal power. Focussing on Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Hume and
Wollstonecraft among others, Ross Carroll’s book casts Enlightenment
Britain in a new light, which speaks to our present-day debates about the
lack of civility in public discourse.
