Abstract
Graphic satire might seem an improper or insensitive medium for dealing with the horrors and brutality of war. Nevertheless, a large proportion of Georgian prints dealt with this subject in a variety of ways which developed and transformed over the course of the period. Despite the frequent outbreak of war, the British public’s experience of warfare remained relatively indirect. Conflicts were rarely waged on national territory so, other than during the Jacobite Rebellions, Britons at home were not seriously threatened by the violence of war.1 Besides press reports and correspondence from enlisted family members or acquaintances, the public relied on artistic representations in order to experience and understand warfare. Such portrayals, even those which purported or aspired to convey faithful, realistic accounts, tended to ‘represent, rather than reproduce’, yet they are still valuable thanks to their ‘capacity to communicate the ideologies, as opposed to the actualities, of combat’.2
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Notes
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© 2015 John Richard Moores
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Moores, J.R. (2015). War (and Peace). In: Representations of France in English Satirical Prints 1740–1832. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380142_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380142_4
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