Guess at the Rest : Cracking the Hogarth Code

Soulier-Détis, Elisabeth

Lutterworth Press（2010/05発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 232 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780718892159
• DDC分類 759.2

Full Description

This engaging study reveals how a half-hidden thread of Masonic symbolism runs through Hogarth's work. The classical and Biblical references, whose ambiguity and apparent paradoxical relation with the eighteenth-century situations depicted have often been underlined, gain coherence and unity when they are analyzed in the symbolic framework of freemasonry and alchemy Hogarth was busy both using and concealing in his prints. The coded meaning is often entirely at odds with the surface one, a fact suspected but never proved by critics so far. A very original and titillating book for academics and general reader alike. Readers will be intrigued by the secrecy of symbols from mythological, biblical and Masonic references and hidden codes that have to be deciphered. Furthermore, they will be also left intrigued by the secret message that the very popular and well-known painter is attempting to deliver. Academics will be interested in the book since this thorough approach has never been proposed by any of Hogarth's scholars so far.

Contents

Introduction; The Progress of Early British Masonry: A Harlot's Progress (April 1732); The Path to Unity between "Ancients" and "Moderns": A Rake's Progress (June 1735); The Union of Mercury and Sulphur: Marriage-a-la-mode (June 1745); Fake and Genuine Freemasonry: Industry and Idleness (October 1747); Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; List of Illustrations; Index.