Thursday: Fifth Week in Lent Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
WEEK 5 THURSDAY...

...I have inherited from my father a splendid old set of nineteenth- century books. (Yes, I had quite a lot of books already, but there is always room for a few more.) This particular set is a collection of writing, and drawing, from the old humorous magazine called Punch, which ran for well over a century from its inception in 1841 before folding, sadly, in 1992. (It was revived in 1996, but collapsed again in 2002.) The books reflect the early part of that time.

Many of the articles are period pieces, still witty and worth reading both in themselves and as a document, now, of social history. Many of the cartoons, too, have retained their quirky humour. Indeed, it was Punch that helped to popularize the modern meaning of the word ‘cartoon’ as a humorous drawing or illustration. Before then, the word had simply referred to a preliminary sketch that an artist or architect might make before producing the finished product.

But some of the cartoons are completely opaque to me now. They depend entirely for their point on a shared set of symbols: on particular animals representing particular politicians, and so on (much as, today, donkeys and elephants represent America’s two main political parties)...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright