A Funny Thing
Eighteenth-Century Literature Undisciplined

Zuroski's 'funny eighteenth century' upends disciplinary norms binding liberal selfhood to extractive capitalism since early imperialism.

Eugenia Zuroski (Author)

9781009486231, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 June 2025

303 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'A Funny Thing is a queer academic monograph that takes its reader on a journey from Augustan satire to RuPaul's Drag Race via flying penises and wig reveals. It is also a deeply impressive book. It is learned, analytically astute, thrillingly deft and well (sometimes hilariously) written. It is also a book that imprints upon the reader's mind a familiar yet largely unexplored eighteenth-century culture full of political and aesthetic energies that are not easily assimilable within conventional literary-historical paradigms. I have never read anything like A Funny Thing before, but I know I want to read it again and I want my colleagues and students to do the same.' Jennie Batchelor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies, University of York

Eighteenth-century literature is weirder than we realize. A Funny Thing invites readers to be taken by its oddities, its silliness, and its absurdities – both because reading this way is fun, and because this challenges colonialism's disciplinary epistemes of propriety that have consistently bound liberal selfhood to extractive capitalism. Focusing on three aesthetic modes largely unnamed in existing studies of the period's literature – the anamorphic, the ludic, and the orificial – this book offers fresh readings of work by Haywood, Walpole, Bentley, and Burney that point to unexpected legacies from the so-called Age of Reason. This book is for any reader curious about the wilder flights of fancy in eighteenth-century fiction, the period's queer sense of humour, and how writing and art of the time challenge colonial reality. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Part I. The Anamorphic: 1. Carried Away
2. Affective Risks
3. The Fascinum
4. Anamorphic Vision
5. The Reading Medusa
6. Sapphic Study
7. An Interlude
Part II. The Ludic: 8. Mapping the Mundus Ludibundus
9. The Art of Sinking
10. This Giddy Bark
11. Animal Spirits
12. Visceral Quickenings
13. Flesh and Blood at Sea
14. The Cat-Arion
15. Dreaming Together
16. Twickenham's Depths
17. An Opening
Part III. The Orificial: 16. Perverting the Novel
17. I Blush for My Folly!
18. Evelina's Orifice
19. A Monstrous Good Stare
20. Enjoying His Mortification
21. Tickling, or the Unbearable
22. The Novel's Queerer Theories
23. Undoing Whiteness
24. Grinning and Sweating
25. Enjoying His Mortification (Wig Reveal Version).

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]