Laughter, Sex, and Violence: Constructing Gender in Early Modern English Jestbooks

Jestbooks, printed collections of jokes, were produced in cheap small formats by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printing presses both on the European continent, and, more importantly for my essay, in England. As courtesy books suggested, the social skill of jesting was necessary even on the highest levels of society, and jestbooks provided material for those who were not quick-witted enough to fabricate jokes of their own.1 Translated from other European languages, poached from earlier publications or written down when heard from friends, jest collections represent a rich archive of themes, characters, plots, and punchlines that seem to have made early modern people laugh—and gender was clearly one of the most frequently discussed cultural categories in English humor.2