SOURCE: Lawson, James. “Hogarth's Plotting of Marriage à la Mode.” Word & Image 14, no. 3 (July-September 1998): 267-80.

In the following essay, Lawson analyzes Hogarth's series Marriage à la Mode using multiple critical perspectives.

Particularly as an engraver, William Hogarth (1697-1764) addressed his audience on matters of social concern. The scene that he presented was the contemporary one, and his mode of address was declamatory. His is a thoroughly extroverted art. Of course, Hogarth was far from unreflective about what was proper to it, considered in terms of autonomy. He wrote The Analysis of Beauty (1753) in order to trace pleasure in art back to formal roots. However, to the extent that the content of his paintings and engravings is capable of subsisting beyond considerations of form, Hogarth's work can be compared directly with the products of other declamatory arts dealing with contemporary realities.

His works, particularly his ‘Modern Moral Subjects’, are comparable with...