The project seeks to investigate satire as ‘world literature’, as texts which circulate internationally, changing and acquiring meanings beyond those found in their initial cultural and historical context. The award will fund a preliminary visit to Beirut in Spring 2023. As part of that visit, Dr Barr will give a research seminar on William Hogarth and British photomontage artist Cold War Steve (https://www.coldwarsteve.com/), considering the resonance of eighteenth-century satire in the current geopolitical crisis. Dr Barr will also meet postgraduate students and teach a class on the figure of the braggart soldier and colonial militarism in Jonathan’s Swift’s ‘The Grand Question Debated’ (1728).

Link to Cold War Steve’s homage to Hogarth, 30 March 2021: https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600×900/p09z6w51.webp