ABSTRACT
Terry Castle’s book investigates the relationship between the masquerade as a popular, yet controversial, form of entertainment in eighteenth-century England (‘a highly visible public institution and a highly charged image’) and the fictional work of authors of the period. It proceeds from the assumption that unlike human suffering, which traditionally meets with dignified attention, human laughter has hardly ever been regarded as a respectable philosophical or historical topos. Both on the level of socio-historical exploration and on that of a more specifically literary analysis, this study reflects on the subversive role played by the masquerade in the eighteenth-century imagination, by virtue of its uncharted crossing of all social and sexual boundaries, ‘its erotic, riotous, and enigmatic associations’, and its consequent challenge to the forces of reason and order.
