Babbington, Nicholas W; (2025) Holding to Account: Figuring Finance in the Parodic Style of the British Caricaturists. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines the recurring presence of financial content and themes in British caricature around 1800, employing a critical iconological framework inspired by W.J.T. Mitchell’s methodology. It bridges economic history and visual culture studies: encompassing the exploration of the transformative impact of the 1690s Financial Revolution on British society, politics, and economics, and investigations of the emergence and development of graphic satirical prints during the eighteenth century. The study argues that later eighteenth-century prints articulated increasingly complex modern social relationships, by ‘figuring’ a social totality that negotiated the complex mediation of individual and group characteristic of the modern public. These prints, moreover, located the context of finance as where the imaginary status of Britain’s ‘imagined community’ could be most concretely established and explored. The thesis advances a critical iconology which goes beyond identifying specific iconographic signs to interrogate the historical conditions under which such representations emerged, gained meaning, and circulated. This approach is particularly relevant to caricature, a practice in which codes and regimes of signification were themselves frequently the subjects of parody. By analysing a ‘parodic style’ characteristic of this period — distinguishing principles of playfulness, satirisation, and remediation — the study reframes these prints as both cultural artifacts and active participants in the critique of modern financial systems. The thesis concludes with an analysis of James Gillray’s The National Parachute, as a case study exploring the interplay of themes, iconography, and deeper iconological meanings. Through this close reading, the study highlights the print’s engagement with contemporary discourses on economics, disciplinarity, and panopticism, offering new insights into the ways ‘caricature’ mediated the cultural anxieties of its time. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to broader interdisciplinary focus on the role of visual satire in shaping and reflecting societal transformations during the transition to modernity.

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