Can a Gentleman Rage?: Ben Franklin on the Curve of Satire

Abstract

[From article]: It was the Golden Age of satire, the eighteenth century in England, and Swift, Pope, Gay, Addison and Steele, Fielding, and Jane Austen were the gold standard. Never has a country before or since produced so much corrosive free-market laughter. Of course, a veritably free press—the Licensing Act had expired in 1695—brought a sunny climate for English satire. Even colonial America sprouted some humorous dissent, but the crop was sparse because the blazing sun of treason law dried up its ground. After the war, American criticism was more humorless invective fired between the Federalists and Republicans than the sophisticated irony and parody of the wits of the mother country. One American exception, however, is thought to be Benjamin Franklin, hailed by many critics as America's founding satirist. If so, where does he stand in the British empire of satire and how should he be presented in literature classrooms of a post-colonial America?