Mediating between the mass and the individual : punch caricatures of the great exhibition of all nations
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.18, No.1, 2010, pages 99-117
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99-117
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The individual, modernity and the emergence of mass culture
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This article is concerned with an analysis of class relations and behavior during the Great Exhibitions of All Nations, the mega-event organized by Prince Albert in May 1851, as illustrated by articles and caricatures published in Punch, the most famous popular press magazine at the time. Aiming at the rising middle-class readership, Punch revealed an underpinning humorous, even critical attitude towards class differentiation and individual representatives, thus depicting both the birth of working-class consciousness and the consolidation of a middle-class attitude towards the two extremes of the social scale. Punch's ambivalence in portraying the aristocracy and the working class in “The Pound and the Shilling” cartoon and its colonial, conservative attitude towards the non-Brit in “Perfidious Albion” and “The North-American Lodgers in 1851 ” are examples to support the argument that individual class consciousness was being molded into mass consciousness at the start of the 1850s in England.
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Περιέχει βιβλιογραφία.The individual and the mass: literary and cultural reflections
