Transcript SATIRE - Humble Independent School District

SATIRE
A literary manner that blends a
critical attitude with humor and wit
for the purpose of improving human
institutions or humanity
INVECTIVE
• If critics simply abuse, they are writing
INVECTIVE
• From the mouth of a wit, INVECTIVE can be a
piercing tool, but when delivered from a shallower
mind, invective invariably is simple abuse
JEREMIAD
• If critics are sad and morose over the state of
society, they are writing a JEREMIAD
• From Jeremiah bemoaning the state of the
Hebrews to Jonathan Edwards espousing Puritan
beliefs to the Christian Coalition trying to restore
“values” in the country, the JEREMIAD has always
had a popular appeal
GREECE AND ROME: Classical
Ancestors of Satire
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Aristophanes
Juvenal
Horace
Martial
Petronius
THE MIDDLE AGES
• Geoffrey Chaucer
– The Canterbury Tales
– Fabliau: “The Miller’s Tale,” “The Reeve’s Tale”
– Beast Fable “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”
SPAIN
• Picaresque Novel
– Don Quixote
• pícaro = rogue or rascal
18TH-CENTURY ENGLAND
• John Dryden
– Mac Flecknoe
• Jonathan Swift
– A Modest Proposal, Gulliver's Travels
• Joseph Addison & Richard Steele
– The Spectator & The Tatler
• Alexander Pope
– The Rape of the Lock
• Henry Fielding
– Shamela
19TH-CENTURY ENGLAND
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
– Don Juan
• William Makepeace Thackeray
– Vanity Fair
20TH-CENTURY ENGLAND
• George Bernard Shaw
– Pygmalion
• Noel Coward
– The Vortex
• Evelyn Waugh
– Decline and Fall
• Aldous Huxley
– Brave New World
DIRECT SATIRE
• The satiric voice speaks, usually in the first
person, either directly to the reader or to a
character in the satire, called the
ADVERSARIUS
• DIRECT or FORMAL satire is fundamentally of
two types: HORATIAN and JUVENALIAN
INDIRECT SATIRE
• The satire is expressed through a narrative
and the characters or groups who are the butt
are ridiculed not by what is said about them
but by what they themselves say and do
THE NOVEL
• The chief vehicle for satire in the modern
world. CERVANTES, RABELAIS, VOLTAIRE,
SWIFT, FIELDING, AUSTEN, THACKERAY,
TWAIN, HUXLEY, ORWELL, JOSEPH HELLER,
and THOMAS PYNCHEON have made
extended fictional narratives the vehicles for
the satiric treatment of human beings and
their institutions
END
SO! CAN YOU WRITE SATIRE?
• Consider the modern courtship ritual: What
forms does it take?
• What roles do the two parties typically play?
What does each demand or expect of each
other?
• What is the aim of the whole process?
• Can you write a satiric examination of the
modern courtship ritual?
THE ASSIGNMENT
• Work alone or with a partner
• Create a satire to present to the class on
Friday
• It may be prose or verse
• It may be Juvenalian or Horatian
– Are you bitterly condemning?
– Are you humorously skewering?