Faulty Power in the Faculty Tower: James Hynes’s The Lecturer’s Tale as a Parody of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current article takes established theoretical postulates about parody as a point of departure for examining how James Hynes’s postmodern novel, The Lecturer’s Tale (2001), contributes fresh fictional angles to the field of campus literature by building on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth to chart its own protagonist’s transition from victim to victor and to sound a cautionary note about ill-advised and addictive pursuit of power. I maintain that Nelson Humboldt, a visiting adjunct lecturer at the elite University of Midwestern at Hamilton Groves, Minnesota, renders the role of Shakespeare’s ambitious eponymous tragic hero, whose usurpation of the crown wreaks havoc on the Kingdom of Scotland. This accounts for Hynes’s satirical portrayal of academia as a battleground where several argumentative and erudite professors, craving praise and prize and armed with words and swords, tend to wage battles of wits and wills and to get entangled in a web of intrigue. Finally, the paper underlines that the novel’s comic vein veils serious concerns about the defects and difficulties afflicting contemporary American academia.