Comedy, caricature and the social order, 1820-50 / Brian Maidment.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maidment, Brian.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Caricatures and cartoons--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Caricatures and cartoons.

Caricatures and cartoons--Social aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

English wit and humor, Pictorial--Great Britain--History--19th century.

English wit and humor, Pictorial.

Caricatures and cartoons--Social aspects.

History.

Great Britain.

Cartoonists--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Cartoonists.

Printing--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Printing.

Physical Description:

x, 244 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Offering an overview of the market place for comic images between 1820 and 1850, this book considers the impact on the development of print culture of the emergent, but soon widespread, use of lithography and wood engraving. Drawing on a wide range of commercially produced print genres, including song books, play-texts, comic annuals and magazines as well as single plate and series of caricatures, this book traces the ways in which Regency and early Victorian visual humour both sustains some of the characteristics of an earlier caricature tradition while also beginning to develop new ways of analyzing and coping with social change through comic forms and genres. Beginning with an overview of the range of media, modes and genres that artists, engravers, publishers and entrepreneurs of print culture used in pursuit of wide readerships, the book discusses contemporary theories of humour in some detail and challenges the generally condescending response that art and social historians have offered to such material. The second half of the book is built upon four detailed case studies of related groups of images produced in the period, through which the broader arguments made in the first half of the book are subjected to more thorough scrutiny. The book will appeal to a broad range of scholars and students across art history, social history, cultural studies and literature. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I. Regency and early Victorian graphic humour - modes and markets. 1. Graphic bric-a-brac? Approaching early nineteenth century graphic humour

2. Regency visual culture in the marketplace

3. Continuity, innovation and change: comic visual culture 1820-1850

Part 2. The social vision of Regency and early Victorian comic visual culture. 4. Reflections in a print shop window: from street theatre to crime scene

5. Robert Seymour: a jobbing artist in the marketplace

6. The 'march of intellect' as a comic event: mockery, heroism and social change

7. Revisiting the Regency - Punch's dustmen.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [231]-239) and index.

ISBN:

9780719075261

0719075262

OCLC:

829721680