Text, Image, and the Performance of Satire

This chapter considers the relationship between text and image in De Hooghe’s satires: how it functions and what it tells us about how the satires were produced and who their intended audience/s might have been. De Hooghe’s satires were issued in the form of broadsheets, the typeset text appearing beneath the print in the form of a spoken (or sometimes sung) dialogue accompanied by letters or numbers identifying the figures in the scene. Neither text nor image is effective alone: the viewer is required to cross-reference them repeatedly in order to understand the satire. While the textual component of De Hooghe’s satires may seem to suggest a relationship to newspaper and pamphlet production, their emphatic rejection of narrative in favour of the discursive places them in the realm of dramatic literature and the theatre, genres more readily suitable to conveying the fictive and often whimsical violence of satire. This discussion includes material considerations, among them the format of the satires and how they were produced, and considers the satires in light of other contemporary printed media, among them the pamphlet, the news sheet, and the ballad. The particular relationship between text and image in De Hooghe’s satires and the distinctly performative quality it engenders shed critical light on their audience and function.