10 Examples of Literary Caricature

It is called literary cartoon to Figure of speech in which a portrait of a person, exaggerating his physical traits or his personality traits, to ridicule her.

Its purpose is humorous and reflects the sharp and critical gaze of the author, who selects the most relevant features and outlines the transformation of the character to make it laughable.

Literary cartoons are sometimes intended to promote political and social change by making questions that, despite the humorous tone, seek to highlight situations of abuse of power, inequalities or injustices.

Some authors who used caricatures in their works were Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Alonso Gerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, Francisco de Quevedo, among others.

Resources used in the literary cartoon

Some resources that the literary cartoon uses are:

Examples of literary cartoons

1. History of the life of the Buscón, by Francisco de Quevedo (1626)

He was a clergyman with a blowpipe, long only at the waist, a small head, russet hair (there is no more to say for those who know the saying), eyes settled on the nape of the neck, which seemed to be looking into caves, so sunken and shallow, that his was a good place for merchants; the nose, between Rome and France, because he had eaten some bad flu, which was not a vice because they cost money; the beards discolored with fear of the neighboring mouth, which, out of sheer hunger, seemed to threaten to eat them; the teeth, they were missing I don't know

how many, and I think they had been banished as lazy and homeless; the long throat like that of an ostrich, with a nut so protruding that he seemed to be forced to eat out of necessity; dry arms, hands like a bundle of vine shoots each.
Looked at from half down, he looked like a fork or compass, with two long, skinny legs. The gait of him very spacious of him; if he was decomposing something, the geese sounded to him like tablets of Saint Lazarus. He speaks it ethically; the big beard, which he never cut to avoid wearing it, and he said that he was so disgusted to see the barber's hand on his face, that before he would let himself be killed if he allowed it; a boy of ours used to cut her hair.
He wore a bonnet on sunny days, hooded with a thousand cat flaps and fat trimmings; it was made of something that was cloth, with the bottoms in dandruff. The cassock, according to some said, was miraculous, because he did not know what color it was. Some, seeing it so hairless, thought it was made of frog skin; others said it was an illusion; from close up it looked black, and from afar it looked blue. He wore it without a girdle; he had no collar or cuffs.
He seemed, with his long hair and his short, miserable cassock, the lackey of death. Each shoe could be the tomb of a Philistine. Well, his room, even there were no spiders in it. He conjured the mice of fear not to gnaw on some crusts that he kept. The bed was on the floor, and he always slept on one side to avoid wearing the sheets. In the end, he was arch-poor and protomiseria.

1. "To a man with a big nose", by Francisco de Quevedo (1647)

Once upon a man stuck a nose,
once upon a superlative nose,
once upon a time there was a half-alive car,
Once upon a very bearded swordfish.

It was a badly faced sundial,
once upon a time there was an elephant face up,
once upon a time there was a sayón nose and write,
Ovidio Nasón was more narrated.

Once upon a spur of a galley,
once upon a pyramid in Egypt,
the twelve Tribes of noses was.

Once upon a very infinite nose,
friesian archinariz, cartoon
Garrafal, purple and fried sabañón.

1. Romanticism and romantics, by Benito Pérez Galdós (1837)

He was, therefore, reduced all the attire of his person to a narrow trousers that designated the pronounced musculature of those legs; a frock coat with a diminished skirt, and fastened tenaciously up to the nut of the throat; a black handkerchief loosely tied around it, and a hat of mysterious shape, tightly tucked up to the left eyebrow. Below him, two locks of varnished black hair were hanging from both sides of his head, forming a convex loop, they were introduced under his ears, making them disappear from the view of the viewer; sideburns, beard and mustache, forming a continuation of that thicket, gave with difficulty permission to whiten two livid cheeks, two fading lips, a sharp nose, two large, black eyes and look somber; a fateful triangular forehead. Such was the true effigies of my nephew, and it goes without saying that he offered such uniform sadness I don't know what sinister and inanimate, so that not infrequently, when With his arms crossed and his beard buried in his chest, he was engrossed in his gloomy reflections, I came to doubt whether it was himself or if I just brought her hanging from a hanger; and it happened to me on more than one occasion when I went to talk to him from behind, thinking I was seeing him from the front, or slapping him on the chest, judging to hit him on the back.

1. The Apostolics, by Benito Pérez Galdós (1879)

Towards the average of the Duque de Alba street lived Mr. Felicísimo Carnicero […]. He was very old in age, but priceless, because his features had taken a long way back. stiffening or petrification that put him, without his suspecting it, in the realms of paleontology. His face, where his skin had taken on a certain chalky consistency and solidity, and where wrinkles resembled holes and very hard cracks of a pebble, it was one of those faces that does not admit the assumption of having been less old in another epoch.

1. "Christmas Eve 1836", by Mariano José de Larra (1836)

My servant has the square table and being in size within easy reach. Therefore, he is a comfortable piece of furniture; her color is the one that indicates the complete absence of what she thinks with; that is to say, it is good; his hands would be confused with his feet, if it weren't for his shoes and because he casually walks on the latter; imitating most men, he has ears that are on either side of his head like vases on a console, for ornament, or like figured balconies, where he does not enter or leave any; he also has two eyes on his face; he thinks he sees with them, what a disappointment he takes!

1. Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens (1857)

Mr. Merdle gave his arm to go down to the dining room to a countess who was confined God knows where in the most deep of an immense dress, with which she kept the proportion that she keeps the bud with the grown cabbage and full. If I am admitted to this low simile, the dress descended the stairs like a very rich broached silk meadow, without anyone noticing how tiny the person who dragged.

1. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1849-50)

"How is Mrs. Fibbitson today?" Said the teacher, looking at another old woman who was sitting by the fire in a wide armchair and who had the effect of being a sheer pile of clothes, to the point that even today I am satisfied that I did not mistakenly sit on top of she.

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