Making light of James Watt: A Burkean approach to the form and attitude of political cartoons
- 1 February 1987
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Quarterly Journal of Speech
- Vol. 73 (1) , 43-59
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638709383793
Abstract
This essay demonstrates the applicability of Brukean concepts to political cartoons. More specifically, it examines a sample of eighty‐three James Watt cartoons and explains: (a) the formal strategy of perspective by incongruity employed in political cartoons; (b) the attitude of rejection or burlesque typically exemplified by the art form; and (c) the fusion of form and attitude in the tropes of metaphor, irony, synecdoche, and metonymy, which serve as organizing principles to guide audience readings of cartoons.Keywords
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