The Nature of Satire

Abstract

The word “satire” belongs to that fairly large class of words which have two meanings, one specific and technical, the other more general. In Roman literature, for instance, the study of satire is essentially the study of a specific literary form, or rather two literary forms, of that name: the poetic satire developed by Horace and Juvenal and the prose or “Menippean” satire developed by Petronius and (in Greek) Lucian. In English literature, with which we are at present concerned, the satire may also be and has been the name of a form. Juvenal and Horace are the models of Donne and Pope, and Lucian is the model of Swift. But this idea of a satire form is in English literature a Renaissance and neo-Classical idea: it hardly existed in the Middle Ages, and it hardly exists now, though we still have our Hilaire Bellocs and Roy Campbells trying to blow up its dying fire with antique bellows. The word now means a tone or quality of art which we may find in any form: in a play by Shaw, a novel by Sinclair Lewis or a cartoon by Low. Hence in dealing with English satire we must include not only Swift and Pope, who worked with the traditional models, but all the writers who have ignored the models but have preserved the tone and attitude of satire. A distinction essential to the treatment of Roman, and perhaps also of French, satire is quite unnecessary in English literature, which has never taken kindly to strict forms.

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