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Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture pp 85–108Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Food for Thought: Consuming and Digesting as Political Metaphor in French Satirical Prints

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine ((PLSM))

Abstract

This essay studies French satirical prints made after the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, depicting the consuming and digesting body as a means of critiquing the stupidity, cupidity, and corruption of governments. In his 1831 caricature, Gargantua, Daumier depicts an obese Louis-Philippe seated on his toilet/throne devouring taxes paid by the poor and digesting them into awards for the elite. The monarch’s huge belly reveals how much of this wealth he has metabolized into his own fat. The caricatures hearken back to a visual language of prints from the first French Revolution—for example, the aristocratic elite devouring and digesting “the people”. Jacques-Louis David’s scatological prints of 1793, still understudied today, are examined here as well as the influence of British satirists.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Reichardt and Kohle, Visualizing the Revolution; Hunt, “La psychologie politique des caricatures révolutionnaires,” 33–42.

  2. 2.

    For a history of prints satirizing the body politic see Baridon and Guédron, L’Art et l’histoire de la caricature.

  3. 3.

    Williams, A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism and The Physical and the Moral. See also Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology and Stafford, Body Criticism.

  4. 4.

    Dorothy Johnson, “Anatomie, réalité, idéalité,” and “The Body Speaks,” 29–62.

  5. 5.

    Diderot, “Notes on Painting,” 193. “L’étude de l’écorché a sans doute ses avantages; mais n’est-il pas à craindre que cet écorché ne reste perpetuellement dans l’imagination; que l’artiste n’en devienne entêté de la vanité de se montrer savant; que son oeil corrompu ne puisse plus s’arrêter à la superficie; qu’en dépit de la peau et des graisses, il n’entrevoie toujours les muscles, son origine, son attache et son insertion”. Diderot, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 10, 463–464.

  6. 6.

    Johnson, “The Body Speaks,” 35–39.

  7. 7.

    Johnson, “Anatomie, réalité, idéalité”.

  8. 8.

    Halliday, The Temperamental Nude.

  9. 9.

    Williams, “Food and Feeling,” 203–221.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 204.

  11. 11.

    Ibid.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., 204–205.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 208–212.

  14. 14.

    “Digestion,” in Dictionnaire des sciences Médicales, vol. IX, 354–451.

  15. 15.

    Johnson, “Anatomie, réalité, idéalité,” “The Body Speaks”.

  16. 16.

    Boime has discussed the importance of these authors vis-à-vis late eighteenth-century scatological prints in “Jacques-Louis David,” 72–81. Reprinted with minor modifications in Cuno, Politique et Polémique, 69–86.

  17. 17.

    Cuno, Ibid.

  18. 18.

    Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 2–18, 43. Doré’s illustrations to the 1873 edition reveal the continued popularity of the book.

  19. 19.

    Bakhtin describes the gaping mouth of the grotesque body as the “open gate leading downward to the bodily underworld”. Ibid., 325–339.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 337–338.

  21. 21.

    “Cette gravure allégorique représente Joseph Le Bon, posté entre les deux guillotines d’Arras et de Cambray tenant deux calices dans lesquels il reçoit d’une main et s’abreuve de l’autre du sang de ses nombreuses victimes, immoleés au dela de 550 dans les deux communes. Il est monté sur des groupes des cadavres entassés les uns sur les autres; d’un côté deux furies dignes compagnes de ce cannibal animent des animaux moins féroces qu’elles à dévorer les restes des malheureuses qu’elles ne peuvent plus tormenter”. Discussed in Johnson, “Visceral Visions”.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Boime, “Jacques-Louis David,” 76–77.

  25. 25.

    This episode was written about extensively by Viola, “The Rites of Cannibalism,” 157–174.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 166–169.

  27. 27.

    Cuno, Politique et Polémique, 227–228, Fig. 118. Bakhtin discusses the role of devils in Mystery plays in Rabelais, 347–348.

  28. 28.

    Cuno, ibid., 227–228, Fig. 119.

  29. 29.

    “Nous vous l’avons bien dit, rien d’aussi indigestes que tous ces coquins”.

  30. 30.

    Swift was much admired by the philosophes such as Voltaire and his 1729 “Modest Proposal…” had been translated into French in 1733. See “Swift’s First Voyages,” 5–16. See also Lee, Swift’s Scatological Satire.

  31. 31.

    Cited in Arasse, La guillotine, 162, no. 61.

  32. 32.

    Cuno, Politique et polémique, 219–220, Fig. 110.

  33. 33.

    Hélas, hélas, “Cette maladie des français me coutera ma couronne”.

  34. 34.

    Boime, “Jacques-Louis David,” 78, Fig. 10.

  35. 35.

    Bakhtin, Rabelais, 147–176.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 148–149.

  37. 37.

    Boime, “Jacques-Louis David,” 78–79.

  38. 38.

    Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Part IV, 258–259.

  39. 39.

    These were studied in detail by Boime, “Jacques-Louis David” and Cuno, “En temps de guerre,” 521–542.

  40. 40.

    Boime, ibid., 73–75.

  41. 41.

    Johnson. Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis, 70–120.

  42. 42.

    Boime, “Jacques-Louis David,” 74–75.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., and Cuno, “En temps de guerre,” 521–542.

  44. 44.

    “Ce gouvernement est représenté sous la figure d’un Diable écorché tout vif, accaparant le Commerce et revêtu de toutes les décorations royales, le Portrait du roi se trouve au derrière du Gouvernement lequel vomit sur son peuple une multitude d’impots avec lesquelles il les foudroye. Cette pérogative est attaché au sceptre et à la couronne”. English translation by Boime, ibid., 74. Boime found a source for David’s devil in Callot’s Temptation of Saint Anthony, 73–74.

  45. 45.

    Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 216.

  46. 46.

    “L’avant-Garde de la Royal Armée reçoit un échec à la porte de la Ville qui est occasioné par la colique de quelques sans-culottes placés au haut de la Porte. L’avant-Garde dans sa défaite brise les cruches, dont il ne sort que toutes sortes de Bêtes vénimeuses qui est l’esprit qui les anime”.

  47. 47.

    See Childs, “Big Trouble,” 26–37.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 33–34. Daumier’s lithograph of Gargantua, likely originally intended for La Caricature, was not published in the journal but was on exhibit in a print shop in Paris.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 28.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 26–27.

  51. 51.

    Weisberg, “In Deep Shit,” 36–40.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 37, Fig. 2.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 37–38, Fig. 4.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Childs, “Big Trouble,” 33, Fig. 8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Dorothy Johnson

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  1. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Manon Mathias

  2. Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Alison M. Moore

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Johnson, D. (2018). Food for Thought: Consuming and Digesting as Political Metaphor in French Satirical Prints. In: Mathias, M., Moore, A.M. (eds) Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01857-3_5

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