Caricature and Realism in the Romantic Novel

A counter-intuitive history of literary caricature, exploring how caricature helped make the realist novel in the Romantic period.

Olivia Ferguson (Author)

9781009274265, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 November 2023

278 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'Ferguson's most compelling contribution lies in her redefinition of caricature as an organizing principle within realism. Her analyses of Austen, Edgeworth, and Godwin are most vigorous when they reveal how authors balance typological abstraction with individual specificity. … Her central claim - that realism and caricature function as interwoven strategies - is historically grounded and conceptually useful. … Ferguson's readings open avenues for intermedial analysis, tracing connections between fiction, graphic satire, theatrical performance, and the grotesque.' Farid Mohammadi, European Romantic Review

What was caricature to novelists in the Romantic period? Why does Jane Austen call Mr Dashwood's wife 'a strong caricature of himself'? Why does Mary Shelley describe the body of Frankenstein's creature as 'in proportion', but then 'distorted in its proportions' – and does caricature have anything to do with it? This book answers those questions, shifting our understanding of 'caricature' as a literary-critical term in the decades when 'the English novel' was first defined and canonised as a distinct literary entity. Novels incorporated caricature talk and anti-caricature rhetoric to tell readers what different realisms purported to show them. Recovering the period's concept of caricature, Caricature and Realism in the Romantic Novel sheds light on formal realism's self-reflexivity about the 'caricature' of artifice, exaggeration and imagination. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Part I. Caricature Talk: 1. Defining Caricature
2. Denying Caricature
3. Caricature Talk and the Spectator
Part II. Novel Caricatures
Caricature Talk and Characterisation Technique: 4. Jane Austen and Anti-Caricature
5. Walter Scott and Historical Caricatures
6. Mary Shelley, Flesh-caricature and Horrid Realism.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]