Defining the Elements of Satire in Prose or Poetry Satire: Composition in which human frailty, and vices are held up to ridicule. It is comic rather than tragic and is written in a mood of scornful amusement at human weaknesses and foibles. Satire is literally “a dish full of mixed foods” and come from the Greek word satire meaning “medley” or mixture of things. It is so called because it uses not only prose or verse, but also the techniques of irony, innuendo, invective, sarcasm, humor and scorn. Although in most cases its purpose is to improve through censure or criticism, it is not necessarily didactic and may be nothing more than an expression of personal feelings. It ranges from light ridicule to bitter attack. Age of Satire: The great age of satire in England was the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Dryden, Pope, Addison, Steele, Swift), but all ages have had satirists. History of Satire: Roman had two types of satire. 1. Juvenal (ian): which is biting, dark, bitter, and angry satire; it points with contempt and moral indignation to the corruption and evil of human beings and institutions. 2. Horace (Horatian): which is gentle, urbane, smiling, light and playful. It aims to correct by gentle, broad, sympathetic humor. Sources of Satire: Human weaknesses, vices and follies. Institutions. Accepted beliefs. Historical situations. Most good satirical writers believe it is best not to attack individuals unless they represent broader issues; personal attack is considered less worthy satire. Famous Satires: Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, “A Modest Proposal”. Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”. Voltaire’s Candide. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are dead. Famous Satirists: Juvenal, Horace, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, Dryden, Addison, Steele, G. B. Shaw, Noel Coward, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, Joseph Heller, Voltaire, Cervantes, Jane Austen, William M. Thackeray, Sinclair Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell. Satiric Techniques: Antithesis: a figure of speech with strongly contrasting words or ideas. Good is the antithesis of evil. Example: The little, big man. Or: And wretches hang that jurymen may dine. Bathos: going quickly from the sublime or serious to the ridiculous or to oversentimentalization. Example: “Advance the fringed curtains of your eyes/ And tell me who comes yonder.” If a movie maker intends to make his audience cry and they laugh, the result is bathos. Burlesque: a composition which derives its humor from exaggerated imitation of a more serious work. A person’s action may be burlesqued. Cervantes burlesques medieval romances in Don Quixote. Caricature: a person’s features may be caricatured. Caricature in art or in literature is an exaggerated representation of a character, a cartoon-like portrait. Exaggeration (overstatement or hyperbole): Exaggeration by saying more than you mean to say. A deliberate form of exaggeration to produce humor. Innuendo: a form of irony in which something derogatory is implied. Example: the man recovered from the bite, while the dog died. Since the 1980s the most popular form is sexual innuendo, see any Ally McBeal or Drew Carey episode for examples. Invective: harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause. Irony: a double meaning; saying one thing and meaning another. There is verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony. Mockery: subject of laughter, scorn, or ridicule. Mock heroic: Imitation of a literary epic and its style by exaggeration and distortion and by elevating the trivial to a level higher than it deserves. A rooster is a handsome hero and his hen, a fair damsel. Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which the idea expressed is two contradictory terms in two words which are joined. Example: living death, sad joy, wise fool, eloquent silence, military intelligence. Paradox: a statement which, because of its contradictory nature, seems absurd, but which really is well founded. Example: Nature often shows her strangeness in her sameness. Parody: a mocking imitation of a known person, literary work, movie, or event. Mad Magazine did many parodies. Reductio ad absurdum: a method of argument which carries to an extreme, but logical conclusion some general idea. For example, the more sleep one gets the healthier one is: therefore, someone who has sleeping sickness and sleeps for months or someone in a coma is really in the best of health. Sarcasm: Using praise to personally mock someone; the word comes from the Greek sarkazein meaning “ to tear flesh,” literally to put in hooks and to rip flesh. A form of verbal irony where a strong and personal disapproval is given. Understatement: Implying the opposite by saying less than you mean to say. A form of irony in which we play down the concept to produce humor. Saying a person has a penny or two if he is wealthy. This is an intentional representation of something as less than what it is. Writing Satire: The trick to writing is to do the opposite of your subject matter: if the subject matter is light, overstate and exaggerate as in Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”; if the subject is serious, understate or make it ridiculous as in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”