In the wake of Enlightenment doubt and the theodicy problem, blasphemous laughter quickly developed into a literary motif around the middle of the 18th century. The study begins by discussing the theological, anthropological, and social conditions favouring this phenomenon. Subsequently, an analysis of canonical texts from three centuries (by Lessing, Tieck, Büchner, Hauptmann, Bataille, Thomas Mann, Christa Wolf, etc.) traces the process by which the motif of blasphemous laughter 'ages' to the point of obsolescence, ultimately becoming an element in a postmodern citation game.