Home Literary Studies Who is the ape, who the human? Reize door het Aapenland (1788) and Die Affenkönige oder die Reformation des Affenlandes (1789) considered
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Who is the ape, who the human? Reize door het Aapenland (1788) and Die Affenkönige oder die Reformation des Affenlandes (1789) considered

  • Peter Altena
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The Power of Satire
This chapter is in the book The Power of Satire

Abstract

Satire can be confronting. It questions all kinds of issues of politics, society and morality, often from a marginal position. By confronting one issue, the satirist turns his back on others, leaving the reader or spectator behind. This paper investigates some of the spatial strategies in visual satire from the early and later modern period, for instance in the work of Giandomenico Tiepolo and James Gillray, taking a special interest in the rhetoric of the back and the satirical gaze. It argues that the representation of the backs of onlookers to a scene helps to direct the satirical gaze.

Abstract

Satire can be confronting. It questions all kinds of issues of politics, society and morality, often from a marginal position. By confronting one issue, the satirist turns his back on others, leaving the reader or spectator behind. This paper investigates some of the spatial strategies in visual satire from the early and later modern period, for instance in the work of Giandomenico Tiepolo and James Gillray, taking a special interest in the rhetoric of the back and the satirical gaze. It argues that the representation of the backs of onlookers to a scene helps to direct the satirical gaze.

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