Exhibition "Sacred Satire: Lampooning Religious Belief in Eighteenth-Century Britain"

Exhibition of prints from the Library's collection.

Religious beliefs and practices provided ample subject matter for the irreverent printmakers producing graphic satire in eighteenth-century Britain. Satirists appropriated centuries-old themes like corruption, hypocrisy, and greed, but updated them with contemporary concerns about the role of religion in the age of enlightenments. The prints in this exhibition reflect a tension between a vision of religion as part of traditional life and the experience of modern Christianity as a collection of new movements, practices, and ideas about belief.

Curated by Misty Anderson, University of Tennessee and Cynthia Roman, the Lewis Walpole Library