BOBC |
Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English DOI: 10.2104/dl090002 BibTeX citation key: Agland2009 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details |
Categories: General Keywords: Caricature, Politics, Randformen des Comics, United Kingdom Creators: Agland, Quartly, Scully Publisher: Monash Univ. ePress (Clayton) Collection: Drawing the Line. Using Cartoons as Historical Evidence |
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Attachments | URLs http://books.publi ... tml/chapter02.html |
Abstract |
When George III descended into madness towards the end of 1788, the ministry of William Pitt the Younger faced the prospect of dismissal should the Prince of Wales, who favoured the Foxite Whigs, become Regent. The Regency Crisis encouraged an outpouring of writings and images, of which its caricature prints are especially fascinating. The caricaturists managed and exploited the tensions, uncertainties and opportunities generated by the king’s madness in a uniquely visceral fashion. Already highly proficient in the manipulation of political figures, the caricaturists contrasted and intermeshed various ‘ways of being mad’ with existing political masculinities to both augment and defuse political vices, follies and (to a much lesser extent) virtues. The imagery of mania and ‘raving madness’ has tended to dominate inquiries into the relationship between madness and politics in the late eighteenth-century, but representations of melancholy and despair were also highly significant, and these played an important role during the Regency Crisis. A wide spectrum of the relationship between madness and masculinity must be addressed, this paper argues, if we are to fully appreciate the role and the resonance of these imageries in political culture.
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