Introduction: Configuring Character and Caricature

Character, this volume proposes, is a transmedia, overfreighted, and paradoxical concept that is fixed and yet ephemeral, and subject to different readings through different critical lenses. Considering the development of characters, this volume reappraises character as a precondition for caricature, addressing how the two merge and become increasingly interlinked over the course of the eighteenth century. Spanning the years 1660–1820, the volume has two main aims: first, to reassess the importance of character as a precondition for caricature and, second, to critically examine the various media through which character was constructed. Three decades on from Deidre Lynch’s Economy of Character, the chapters that follow explore the state of the field of ‘characterologies’ from a variety of theoretical frameworks.