The practice of caricature in 18th‐century Britain

Abstract

This essay offers a survey of critical studies of caricature—as in the art of physiognomic exaggeration and distortion—in 18th‐century Britain. It reviews scholarship that has grappled with such questions as: what is caricature and how do we recognize it? Why caricature? How does caricature make itself felt within the hierarchies of 18th‐century British culture? When and why does it emerge in Britain as a dominant mode of visual satire? What, in this cultural matrix, is its politics, if it can be said to have a politics at all? And can we speak of caricature as a verbal practice as much as a graphic one? This essay begins with a consideration of early efforts to formulate a theory of caricature before turning to more recent contributions to the field that have sought to map the cultural politics of caricature's presence within 18th‐century graphic satire. In a final section, it then considers the work undertaken to trace practices of caricature on stage and in the novel.

British laughter and humor in the long 18th century

“…Recent scholarship on 18th‐century British humor confirms in its range and variety that comedic genres flourished in this period alongside theories of where laughter originated and to what social uses it should be put. David Francis Taylor's Literature Compass article “The Practice of Caricature in Eighteenth‐Century Britain,” for example, provides an overview of the vast number of studies that have appeared over the past several decades focused on caricature and graphic satire alone (Taylor, ). “Humor,” even as it becomes a type of literature, doesn't name a genre—instead, it refers broadly to comedy, wit, satire, and other forms of print and performance that afforded mirth, pleasure, and amusement, all by various techniques.…”