SATIRE

artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement. Though there are examples of satire in ancient Greek literature, notably the comic plays of Aristophanes, the great Roman poets Horace and Juvenal established the genre known as the formal verse satire and, in so doing, exerted a pervasive, if often indirect, influence on all subsequent literary satire. The two Romans approached the form from radically different perspectives. The character of the satirist as projected by Horace is that of an urbane man of the world who is concerned about folly, which he sees everywhere, but who is moved to laughter rather than to indignation or rage. Juvenal, writing more than a century later, conceives the satirist's role differently. His most characteristic posture is that of the upright man who looks with horror on the corruptions of his time, his heart consumed with anger and frustration. Satiric writing after Horace and Juvenal traditionally followed the example of one or other of the two writers. This resulted in the formation of two subgenres identified by the 17th-century English poet John Dryden as comic satire and tragic satire. These denominations have come to mark the boundaries of the satiric spectrum, whether in reference to poetry or prose or to some form of satiric expression in another medium. Satire is found embodied in an indefinite number of literary forms. In English literature alone, the form is manifested in the superb wit of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the comedies of Ben Jonson, the verses of Dryden and of Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift's excoriation of civilized society in Gulliver's Travels. Satire is a major element in the plays of Molire, George Bernard Shaw, and Bertolt Brecht, among other dramatists, while Franois Rabelais and Nikolay Gogol have been among its best-known practitioners in fiction. Satire is also an important element in the fictional utopias of Sir Thomas More, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell. Motion pictures have sometimes been a more effective vehicle for satire than the stage, as evidenced by Charlie Chaplin's spoof of Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940), Stanley Kubrick's portrayal of nuclear annihilation in Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Sidney Lumet's portrait of commercial television in Network (1976). In the visual arts, caricature has been the chief vehicle for satire, as in the work of Honor Daumier and Thomas Rowlandson, although the anecdotal pictures of the 18th-century British painter William Hogarth are a notable exception. In the 20th century the political cartoon became perhaps the best-known platform for satirical commentary. The favourite medium for such cartoonists is the black-and-white drawing, in which the satirical attack is pointed up by a brief verbal caption. artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement. Satire is a protean term. Together with its derivatives, it is one of the most heavily worked literary designations and one of the most imprecise. The great English lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined satire as a poem in which wickedness or folly is censured, and more elaborate definitions are rarely more satisfactory. No strict definition can encompass the complexity of a word that signifies, on one hand, a kind of literatureas when one speaks of the satires of the Roman poet Horace or calls the American novelist Nathanael West's A Cool Million a satireand, on the other, a mocking spirit or tone that manifests itself in many literary genres but can also enter into almost any kind of human communication. Wherever wit is employed to expose something foolish or vicious to criticism, there satire exists, whether it be in song or sermon, in painting or political debate, on television or in the movies. In this sense satire is everywhere. Although this article deals primarily with satire as a literary phenomenon, it records its manifestations in a number of other areas of human activity as well. Additional reading David Worcester, The Art of Satire (1940), a study of rhetorical techniques available to the satirist; James R. Sutherland, English Satire (1958), a sound scholarly history; Alvin B. Kernan, The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance (1959), valuable theory and criticism; Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (1960), on the origins of satire in magic and its development into an art; Ronald Paulson, The Fictions of Satire (1967), a study of satire in fiction from Lucian to Swift, and (ed.), Satire: Modern Essays in Criticism (1971), an authoritative and indispensable collection; Matthew J.C. Hodgart, Satire (1969), a well-illustrated, readable survey of satire in many forms and in many countries.