After Hogarth

Abstract

Though on occasion Hogarth drew attention to human-animal relationships that he considered abusive, it was mostly human interests that occupied the discursive centre of his art. His animal images he tended to wield in much the same way that a gloved puppeteer would have manipulated crocodiles and dogs in a Punch and Judy show at the Bartholomew fair. As such, even though his Four Stages of Cruelty does espouse a link between animal cruelty and subsequent violence between humans, Hogarth’s artistic talents do not serve as some prefigurative marker in the history of animal rights. As the desired emotional reaction to artistic representations of animal cruelty, a logic of disgust and pity can never in itself lead to an acceptance of animal rights.

Anthropocentrism was uppermost in Hogarth’s pictures. This problem notwithstanding, this chapter suggests that Hogarth’s legacy lies in his as-yet-unrecognised contribution to what are dubbed ‘animal-it-narratives.’ Leading more or less directly into the creation of pro-animal children’s stories, animal-it-narratives involve the art of listening to what animals have to say and believing that we can do so.