"Tiny Artists from the Big World": The Rhetoric of Representing Extraordinary bodies during the Singer Midgets 1928 Tour in Prague
Abstract
Essay describes the visit of famous "Lilliputian" group Singer's Midgets in Prague in 1928. Their appearance in Prague is thematised as an impressive display of contemporary imagination about bodily ab/normality and middle-class values.
I've tried to show different possible relationships between "midgets" and their audiences, enabled by the use of wondrous and satirical rhetoric, that formed the representation of the extraordinary body. Finally, the question of the specific Czechoslovak context and it's influence on exhibitions of "human curiosities" was posed.
I've stressed the importance of grotesque - satirical rhetoric in enabling the (self-) critique of Czechoslovak bourgeois and intersection with the discourse of republicanism that shaped the middle-class identity in interwar Czechoslovakia.