Date of Award
2011
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing
Keywords
Literature.
Supervisor
Jirgens, Karl (English Language, Literature and Creative Writing)
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Hands of the Tyrants is a satirical novella featuring a protagonist (a CSIS agent named Lucas Young) who infiltrates a collective of performance and conceptual artists known as Apollo's Army. Placed firmly in the literary tradition of Menippean satire, this novella offers the reader a mixture of prose and verse, extended dialogues and debates, multiple genres, absurd situations, and a journey--all of which equally satirize artists and the institutions they rely upon. Lucas' initiation into the art world is a 21st century transposition of the adventures of his fictional ancestors: Alice, Candide, and Gulliver. In Hands of the Tyrants, a cross-country tour of Canada is told through two first-person narrators (Young and another agent, Dr. Pangloss) in the form of surveillance reports. The contrast between these characters and their reports becomes heightened as Lucas fails to distinguish the line between his assumed and actual identities. The object of satiric attack in this novella is the ironic relationship between avant-garde artists and a government which funds their artistic dissent. Although Hands of the Tyrants is set in Canada during the summer of 2010, it transcends this specific time and place by satirizing the universal vices of decadence, hypocrisy, and vanity.
Recommended Citation
Laverty, Micheal, "Hands of the Tyrants" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 14.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/14