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The full title of this book is City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London, and that is precisely what it is: an almost overly monumental examination of laughter (as thought of socially and anatomically), satire (in its various kinds), class, geography, literature, later images of London, earlier images of London and anything else within reason, all seen through the lens of the many thousands of satirical prints produced in the city.
Gatrell states that this is the first real survey of those of the satirical prints that are not centered specifically on radical politics. I have no reason to doubt him, and the prints are what really make this book. They are scatological, rude, scurrilous, witty, charming, absurd, good, bad, and indifferent, and they provide a link I had always found missing in what I know of art history. ( They are the direct line between the apocalypses and hell-visions of medieval woodcut and the nineteenth-century newspaper cartoon. )
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Gatrell states that this is the first real survey of those of the satirical prints that are not centered specifically on radical politics. I have no reason to doubt him, and the prints are what really make this book. They are scatological, rude, scurrilous, witty, charming, absurd, good, bad, and indifferent, and they provide a link I had always found missing in what I know of art history. ( They are the direct line between the apocalypses and hell-visions of medieval woodcut and the nineteenth-century newspaper cartoon. )
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are
