Article published in:
The Power of Satire
Edited by Marijke Meijer Drees and Sonja de Leeuw
[Topics in Humor Research 2] 2015
► pp. 147–174

Looking backward. The rhetoric of the back in visual satire

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.
Published online: 22 October 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.2.11gri
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