Coleridge's Humour in The Watchman

This essay seeks to challenge Coleridge's (and some subsequent critics') retrospective accounts of the glib naivety of The Watchman's humour, by arguing that his jokes reveal a careful and considered approach to the dissemination of his ideas. It identifies several types of humour employed within the work, examining both the articles Coleridge himself contributed, and the manner in which he arranged the contributions of others. Such an examination is only possible in full view of the contemporary periodical context, to which Coleridge is quite clearly responding. By adapting, and at times undermining, the forms of humour popular amongst the readerships of other periodicals, Coleridge's own jokes reveal his pervasive attention to his relationship with his audience. The Watchman consistently wrong-foots its reader with its subtle and provocative wit, and in so doing it displays a conception of the function and purpose of humour that Coleridge would gradually refine in the years to come.