Refugees, Patriotism, and Hogarth’s The Gate of Calais (1748)

Grandjouan, Kate (2020) Refugees, Patriotism, and Hogarth’s The Gate of Calais (1748). Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 20 (3). pp. 287-303. ISSN 1473-8481

Abstract

The subject of this paper is a famous satirical painting of the French by the British painter William Hogarth (1697–1764). Hogarth’s The Gate of Calais has long proved to be an effective conduit for national sentiment. Deploying an inter-disciplinary analysis, the paper argues that Hogarth’s satire draws on a cultural heritage that originated within French refugee communities writing to discredit politics ‘back home’. Understood from this perspective, the painting demonstrates how the cultural materials of a French ethnic minority can become woven into the meta-narrative about Britishness and then, in turn, become generative of meaning for broader communities of transnationalized Protestants, not just for the British themselves.

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