The Verbal and Visual Background of Illness in Hogarth’s Graphic Art
Peter Wagner (Universität Koblenz-Landau)
In a number of engravings produced by William Hogarth, illness is thematised in one or several contexts. In his series A Harlot’s Progress (1732), for instance, we find satirical visual allusions both to illness as a social evil and potential cause of death (the venereal disease of the protagonist) as well as a condition that is made worse by those one would actually expect to help – i.e., doctors and quacks.
In my paper, I will deal with this double aspect by focussing on a selected numbers of engravings drawn from the Harlot series and Marriage-à-la-Mode. Along the way, I shall discuss the verbal, literary, basis of Hogarth’s attacks in these cases that were directed against the lamentable state of the medical profession in the eighteenth century). It will beccome clear that Hogarth’s visual satirical art owes much to types already developed in the theatre as early as the time of Molière. Simultaneously, I want to deal with illness as a metaphor for what, as Hogarth saw it, was wrong with the society of his day and age.