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