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Satire: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Satire
The word satire does not originate from the mythological satyrs, half-man half-goat creatures of Greek legend, but from the Latin phrase lanx satura, meaning a full dish of mixed fruits. This etymological root reveals that the genre was originally conceived as a medley or miscellany of various kinds, rather than a singular, focused attack. The Roman poet Quintilian later formalized this into a strict literary form, yet the term quickly escaped its narrow definition to become a global tool for social criticism. In the 17th century, the philologist Isaac Casaubon was the first to definitively dispute the satyr connection, proving that the word's true lineage lay in the concept of a mixed dish rather than the wild, lecherous creatures of the forest. This distinction is crucial because it frames satire not as a chaotic outburst, but as a deliberate, structured collection of observations designed to hold up vices, follies, and abuses to ridicule. The goal is rarely just to make people laugh; it is to use wit to draw attention to specific and wider issues in society, often with the intent of shaming perceived flaws into improvement. While modern audiences often associate satire with humor, the genre's true power lies in its ability to function as a constructive social criticism, exposing the contradictions of individuals, corporations, governments, and society itself.
The Gentle Smile And The Savage Bite
Satire operates on a spectrum of intensity, ranging from the gentle, playful mockery of Horatian satire to the savage, contemptuous attack of Juvenalian satire. Horatian satire, named for the Roman poet Horace who lived from 65 to 8 BCE, seeks to heal the situation with smiles rather than anger. Horace addressed issues with humor and clever mockery, gently ridiculing the absurdities and follies of human beings without harsh or accusing tones. His work was designed to be a gentle reminder to take life less seriously, evoking a wry smile at the shared human condition. In contrast, Juvenalian satire, named for the Roman satirist Juvenal who wrote in the late first and early second centuries AD, is far more abrasive and pessimistic. Juvenal disagreed with the opinions of public figures and institutions, actively attacking them through literature that utilized exaggeration and parody to make targets appear monstrous and incompetent. Unlike Horace, Juvenal attacked public officials and governmental organizations, regarding their opinions as not just wrong, but evil. The goal of a Juvenalian satirist is to provoke political or societal change by seeing the opponent as evil or harmful, often using irony, sarcasm, and moral indignation to jeopardize the opponent's reputation. Jonathan Swift, writing in the 18th century, borrowed heavily from Juvenal's techniques to critique contemporary English society, proving that the genre could be a weapon of war rather than a tool of amusement. This distinction between the two modes remains relevant today, as modern political satire often oscillates between the soft, pseudo-satire of the Horatian style and the biting, polarized outrage of the Juvenalian tradition.
The word satire originates from the Latin phrase lanx satura, meaning a full dish of mixed fruits, rather than from mythological satyrs. This etymological root reveals that the genre was originally conceived as a medley or miscellany of various kinds. The Roman poet Quintilian later formalized this into a strict literary form, yet the term quickly escaped its narrow definition to become a global tool for social criticism.
Who were the two main ancient Roman satirists and what were their styles?
The two most prominent ancient Roman satirists were Horace and Juvenal, who established the two main modes of the genre. Horatian satire, named for the Roman poet Horace who lived from 65 to 8 BCE, seeks to heal the situation with smiles rather than anger. In contrast, Juvenalian satire, named for the Roman satirist Juvenal who wrote in the late first and early second centuries AD, is far more abrasive and pessimistic, attacking public officials and governmental organizations.
When was the Bishops' Ban of 1599 issued and what did it order?
The Bishops' Ban of 1599 was issued in 1599 by the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London Richard Bancroft. This decree ordered the burning of certain volumes of satire by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and Joseph Hall. The decree prohibited the future printing of satire in verse, though it was little enforced.
Who founded The Onion and when was it established?
The Onion was founded in 1988 as a satirical news site that has become a prominent part of contemporary satire. The satirical news articles have been so convincing that some readers fail to realize they are not real, with headlines like Local Woman Devotes Life To Doing God's Busy Work. The site continues to operate in the digital realm alongside other satirical platforms like The Babylon Bee, founded in 2016.
What happened during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005?
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005 caused global protests by offended Muslims and violent attacks with many fatalities in the Near East. The incident resulted in embassies being attacked and 139 people killed. This event highlights how satire frequently escapes censorship in a way more direct criticism might not, yet it periodically runs into serious opposition.
The history of satire stretches back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC in Ancient Egypt, where The Satire of the Trades argued that the lot of a scribe was far superior to that of the ordinary man. This text, though seemingly serious to scholars like Helck, served as an early example of holding up the flaws of society to ridicule. In Ancient Greece, the playwright Aristophanes became one of the best known early satirists, using his plays to criticize powerful figures like the demagogue Cleon in The Knights. Aristophanes faced persecution for his work, and his plays turned upon images of filth and disease, a style later adopted by the Greek dramatist Menander. The oldest form of satire still in use is the Menippean satire, named after Menippus of Gadara, which mixes seriousness and mockery in dialogues and presents parodies before a background of diatribe. In Ancient China, satire, known as fengci, went back at least to Confucius and was mentioned in the Book of Odes as a way to criticize by means of an ode. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the concept of yuyan, or entrusted words, was used to clarify views through short explanatory anecdotes, though this tradition died out under the heavy persecution of dissent by Qin Shi Huang and Han Wudi. The Roman world saw the first critical discussion of satire by Quintilian, who invented the term to describe the writings of Gaius Lucilius. The two most prominent ancient Roman satirists were Horace and Juvenal, but other important figures like Persius and the 6th-century BC poet Hipponax, whose satirae were so cruel that the offended hanged themselves, contributed to the genre's development. In the 2nd century AD, Lucian wrote True History, a book satirizing unrealistic travelogues by claiming to tell lies as if he had actual knowledge, describing interplanetary exploration and life inside a 200 mile long whale to expose the fallacies of books like The Odyssey.
The Medieval And Renaissance Revival
Satire re-emerged in the Medieval Islamic world through the genre of hija, or satirical poetry, and was introduced into Arabic prose literature by the author Al-Jahiz in the 9th century. Al-Jahiz employed a satirical approach to serious topics in anthropology and sociology, leavening the lump of solemnity with amusing anecdotes and witty observations. In the 10th century, the writer Tha'alibi recorded satirical poetry by As-Salami and Abu Dulaf, who engaged in a poetic duel of praise and mockery. The terms comedy and satire became synonymous after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic, where Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and identified it with Arabic poetic themes. In Medieval Europe, the songs by Goliards, now known as the Carmina Burana, provided early examples of satirical poetry, though little has survived. The High Middle Ages saw the birth of modern vernacular literature, with Geoffrey Chaucer using satire to mock the class system and feudal society. The work Reynard the Fox, written by Willem die Madoc maecte, represented various classes as anthropomorphic animals, with the lion symbolizing the weak and greedy nobility. The Renaissance brought a return to direct social commentary through the works of Giovanni Boccaccio and François Rabelais. In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London Richard Bancroft issued the Bishops' Ban of 1599, ordering the burning of certain volumes of satire by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and Joseph Hall. This decree prohibited the future printing of satire in verse, though it was little enforced. The Elizabethan writers thought of satire as related to the rude, coarse, and sharp satyr play, containing more straightforward abuse than subtle irony. In the 1590s, a new wave of verse satire broke with the publication of Hall's Virgidemiarum, triggering an avalanche of satire until the fashion was brought to an abrupt stop by censorship.
The Age Of Enlightenment And The Satiric Club
The Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries advocating rationality, produced a great revival of satire in Britain. This was fueled by the rise of partisan politics and the formation of the Scriblerus Club in 1714, which included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. The club focused their attention on Martinus Scriblerus, an invented learned fool whose work they attributed all that was tedious, narrow-minded, and pedantic in contemporary scholarship. Jonathan Swift, one of the greatest Anglo-Irish satirists, practiced modern journalistic satire in works like A Modest Proposal, where he suggested that Irish peasants be encouraged to sell their own children as food for the rich to attack indifference to the plight of the desperately poor. In his book Gulliver's Travels, he wrote about the flaws in human society in general and English society in particular. Alexander Pope, born on the 21st of May 1688, was a satirist known for his Horatian style and translation of the Iliad. In The Rape of the Lock, Pope delicately chided society by holding up a mirror to the follies and vanities of the upper class, presenting the actions of the British aristocracy as foolish and ridiculous. Daniel Defoe pursued a more journalistic type of satire, famous for The True-Born Englishman which mocked xenophobic patriotism, and The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, which advocated religious toleration by means of an ironical exaggeration of the highly intolerant attitudes of his time. The pictorial satire of William Hogarth was a precursor to the development of political cartoons in 18th-century England, which developed under the direction of James Gillray, the pre-eminent cartoonist of the era who called the king, prime ministers, and generals to account.
The Victorian And Modern Satiric Boom
Several satiric papers competed for the public's attention in the Victorian era, such as Punch, founded in 1841, and Fun, founded in 1861. Perhaps the most enduring examples of Victorian satire are to be found in the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, where a jester is given lines that paint a neat picture of the method and purpose of the satirist. Novelists such as Charles Dickens used passages of satiric writing in their treatment of social issues, while Sidney Godolphin Osborne wrote scathing Letters to the Editor of the London Times, receiving public censure from Parliament's then Home Secretary Sir James Graham for his bitter and biting satire on the British government's mistreatment of poor farm workers. In the United States, Mark Twain grew to become the greatest American satirist, with his novel Huckleberry Finn set in the antebellum South, where the moral values Twain wishes to promote are completely turned on their heads. His hero, Huck, is a rather simple but goodhearted lad who is ashamed of the sinful temptation that leads him to help a fugitive slave. Twain's younger contemporary Ambrose Bierce gained notoriety as a cynic and black humorist with his dark, bitterly ironic stories, many set during the American Civil War, and his most famous work of satire is probably The Devil's Dictionary, in which the definitions mock cant, hypocrisy, and received wisdom. In the 20th century, Karl Kraus is considered the first major European satirist since Jonathan Swift, while English authors such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell made serious and even frightening commentaries on the dangers of sweeping social changes. In the United States, the 1950s saw satire introduced into American stand-up comedy most prominently by Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, who were ostracized by the mass media establishment as sick comedians. Paul Krassner's magazine The Realist began publication in the same period, becoming immensely popular during the 1960s and early 1970s among people in the counterculture, with articles and cartoons that were savage, biting satires of politicians such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
The Satire Boom And The Digital Age
A more humorous brand of satire enjoyed a renaissance in the UK in the early 1960s with the satire boom, led by comedians including Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore, whose stage show Beyond the Fringe was a hit not only in Britain, but also in the United States. Other significant influences in 1960s British satire include David Frost, Eleanor Bron, and the television program That Was The Week That Was. Joseph Heller's most famous work, Catch-22, published in 1961, satirizes bureaucracy and the military, and is frequently cited as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. The film Dr. Strangelove, released in 1964, was a popular satire on the Cold War, and the British satire boom had a direct influence on the comedy troupe Monty Python. Empire magazine called Monty Python's Life of Brian, released in 1979, an unrivalled satire on religion. In the United States, Stephen Colbert's television program, The Colbert Report, ran from 2005 to 2014, instructing audiences in the methods of modern American political satire through a character who was an opinionated and self-righteous commentator. In the United Kingdom, the puppet show Spitting Image was one of the most watched television shows of the 1980s and early 1990s, satirizing the royal family, politics, entertainment, sport, and British culture of the era. Contemporary satire has expanded into the digital realm, with satirical web series and sites including The Onion, founded in 1988, and The Babylon Bee, founded in 2016. The Onion's satirical news articles have been so convincing that some readers fail to realize they are not real, with headlines like Local Woman Devotes Life To Doing God's Busy Work. In the realm of video games, satire features prominently in the British series Grand Theft Auto, created by DMA Design in 1997, and the Fallout series, developed by Interplay in 1995, which use satire to comment on the state of civilization and the roles of males in particular.
The Censorship And The Prophetic Voice
Because satire criticizes in an ironic, essentially indirect way, it frequently escapes censorship in a way more direct criticism might not, yet it periodically runs into serious opposition. In 1599, the Bishops' Ban of 1599 ordered the burning of certain volumes of satire, though it was little enforced. In the 21st century, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005 caused global protests by offended Muslims and violent attacks with many fatalities in the Near East, with embassies attacked and 139 people killed. In 2006, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen released Borat, a mockumentary that satirized everyone from high society to frat boys, which was criticized by many and boycotted by the government of Kazakhstan. In 2008, South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, known as Zapiro, came under fire for depicting then-president Jacob Zuma in the act of undressing, leading to the shelving of a satirical TV show created by Shapiro. Satire is occasionally prophetic, with jokes that precede actual events. Benjamin Franklin anonymously published a letter in 1784 suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by arising earlier to use morning sunlight, presaging modern daylight saving time. The second episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which debuted in 1969, featured a sketch entitled The Mouse Problem, which depicted a cultural phenomenon similar to some aspects of the modern furry fandom, which did not become widespread until the 1980s. In January 2001, a satirical news article in The Onion, entitled Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over, had newly elected President George Bush vowing to develop new and expensive weapons technologies and to engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years, prophesying the Iraq War and the Great Recession. The comedy film Americathon, released in 1979, predicted a number of trends and events that would eventually unfold in the near future, including an American debt crisis, Chinese capitalism, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the popularity of reality shows.