Effigies

An effigy is a representation of a specific person in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional medium. The use of the term is normally restricted to certain contexts in a somewhat arbitrary way: recumbent effigies on tombs are so called, but standing statues of individuals, or busts, are usually not. Likenesses of religious figures in sculpture are not normally called effigies. Effigies are common elements of funerary art, especially as a recumbent effigy (in a lying position) in stone or metal placed on a tomb, or a less permanent "funeral effigy", placed on the coffin in a grand funeral, wearing real clothing. Figures, often caricatural in style, that are damaged, destroyed or paraded in order to harm the person represented by magical means, or merely to mock or insult them or their memory, are also called effigies.

It is common to burn an effigy of a person ("burn in effigy") as an act of protest.

The word first appeared in 1539 and comes, perhaps via French, from the Latin effigies, meaning "representation." This spelling was originally used in English for singular senses; even a single image was "the effigies of ...". (This spelling seems to have been later reanalyzed as a plural, creating the singular "effigy.") In effigie was probably understood as a Latin phrase until the 18th century. The word occurs in Shakespeare's As You Like It of 1600 (II, vii, 193), where scansion suggests that the second syllable is to be emphasized, as in the Latin pronunciation (but unlike the modern English pronunciation).

The best known British example of a caricature effigy is the figure of the 1605 Gunpowder Plotter Guy Fawkes, found in charge of gunpowder to blow up the King in the House of Lords. On November 5, Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night, his effigy, typically made of straw and old clothing, is still traditionally burned on a bonfire in many villages accompanied by fireworks.

In many parts of the world, there are traditions of large caricature effigies of political or other figures carried on floats in parades at festivals. Political effigies serve a broadly similar purpose in political demonstrations and annual community rituals such as that held in Lewes, on the south coast of England. In Lewes, models of important or unpopular figures in current affairs are burned on Guy Fawkes Night, formerly alongside an effigy of the Pope.

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