Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints

This book is the first to examine the meaning encoded in the very form of caricature, a form of popular and polemical visual art that burst suddenly on the scene in late eighteenth—century England, and to explain its rise as a consequence of the emergence of modernity, especially the modern self. Caricature and the modern self developed in tandem: as the modern notion of selfhood_with its valorization of interiority, private authenticity, and consistency across time_rather suddenly replaced...