The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760-1830. By David Taylor
2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 70; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/escrit/cgaa012
ISSN1471-6852
Autores Tópico(s)Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
ResumoWriting to a friend in London in 1824, Walter Scott requested ‘a parcel of old caricatures, which can be bought cheap’. He wanted to have the prints stuck up on the walls of his water closets. Assuming that parliamentary satires would be included in the parcel, Scott instructed Daniel Terry that ‘the Tory side of the question would of course be most acceptable’. So, visitors to the toilets at Abbotsford were enclosed in a small, solitary version of the country house print room. They would have found plenty of reading material in the epigraphs, captions, and speech balloons of Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, James Sayers, William Heath, and George Humphrey – including intricate references to works such as Paradise Lost and The Tempest. Scott’s chamber of retirement, where satirical prints held matter enough to occupy the mind for whatever length of time proved necessary, serves to illustrate the ‘pleasing labour’, in Hogarth’s phrase, of puzzling out allegories and parodies. This ‘gratifying difficulty’, in David Taylor’s phrase, ensured satirical prints’ appeal to the culturally and politically literate.
Referência(s)