Demonstrating the usefulness of reading verbal and visual texts through a framework of humour, this collection examines how, structurally and strategically, humour has engaged with audiences in different historical contexts in the West and contributed more broadly to cultural formation and transformation.

Vivienne Westbrook is an Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia and a member of St. John's College, Cambridge. She has received numerous international endorsements for her work in cultural history, including a Presidential Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Shun-liang Chao is Associate Professor of English at National Chengchi University, Taiwan and currently a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University. He is the author of Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte (Routledge, 2010), awarded an Honourable Mention in 2013 for the Anna Balakian Prize of the International Comparative Literature Association.

Foreword: The Intersection of Humour Studies and Cultural History Jessica Milner Davis Introduction: Reading Humorously: Towards New Perspectives Shun-liang Chao and Vivienne Westbrook 1. Literary Humour in English: A Short Cultural History Robert S. White 2. Unbidden to the Banquet: Humour in the Classical Period R. Drew Griffith 3. Understatement and Incongruity: Humour in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England Jonathan Wilcox 4. Laughter and Humour in Middle English Texts Anne M. Scott 5. Shakespeare's Reformation Humour Vivienne Westbrook 6. "To Make Fools Laugh, and Women Blush, and Wise Men Ashamed": Humour in the English Restoration Lyndsey Bakewell and Sara Read 7. Beyond Slapstick: Humour, Physicality, and Empathic Performance in G. E. Lessing's Comedies Pascale LaFountain 8. Emerson's Sad Clown: American Transcendentalism and the Dilemma of the Humourist John Michael Corrigan 9. The Congruity of Incongruity: Victorian Intermedial Humour Mou-Lan Wong 10. "A Tomato Is Also a Child's Balloon": Surrealist Humour as a Moral Attitude Shun-liang Chao Conclusion John Morreall