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.