HUMOUR AS AFFECT IN SUSANNA CENTLIVRE’S PLAY A BOLD STROKE FOR A WIFE

Abstract

Susanna Centlivre’s plays are conceived in a cultural climate of moral debate and ideological reconsideration of values such as virtue, goodness and liberty. Centlivre’s use of humour becomes an ethical instrument and shows eighteenth-century audiences how liberty and freedom triumph over the excesses and follies of opposing figures such as parents and guardians. On the one hand, Centlivre’s comic playwriting creates an empathetic drama in which the female heroines are virtuous and elicit edifying responses from the audience and, on the other, the comic experience, following Bakhtin’s notion of laughter and the comic, enables freedom from the socially conventional notion of selfhood, thus making space for a re-orientation of values and norms.

Keywords

• eighteenth-century drama
• comedy
• affect theory
• empathy