A satirist takes reality and twists it into a shape and
form requiring new consideration. Often satire
examines things of such an everyday nature that they
are ignored, or simply taken for granted, but in the
twisting and reshaping the subject of the satire is
revealed as something different.
According to the Cambridge Encyclopedia satire is:
A literary genre whose double derivation, from Latin
satura 'mixture' and the parodic satyr play, underlines
its complex form and motive. The motive includes the
exposure of folly and the castigation of vice, with the
Latin satirists Horace and Juvenal representing these
two extremes. But satire is also both festive and fictive,
and the works of Rabelais and Swift, the plays of Ben
Johnson, and the novels of Dickens are much more
than the sum of their moral exhortations. Satire has
colonized all literary forms, and in doing so has tended
to expose formal conventions themselves…
Not only does The Cambridge Encyclopedia present us
with a definition of satire, but it presents the interesting
notion that satire transcends the state of a mere genre
in that it "… has colonized all literary forms, and in
doing so has tended to expose formal conventions
themselves…" While, presumably, the reference to the
exposure of "formal conventions" is meant exclusively
within the framework of literature as an art form, it brings
to point the slippery nature of satire as a literary form.
While satire obviously slides easily from poetry to
essays to novels to short stories to newspaper
columns - does it slide just as easily underneath the
microscope of critical analysis?
In the Cambridge definition we find that in satire there
is a moral point of view that is presented in a "festive
and fictive" manner. Perhaps it can be taken for granted
that the "moral exhortations" are determined by the
author and whether or not the work is "festive" is
determined by the reader, thus creating the inevitable
partnership between writer and reader essential to the
success or failure of a piece of writing. And while it may
be argumentative to claim that any writer, or writers,
might be a universal example of any particular style of
writing, no two satirical writers have stayed within the
collective consciousness of a such a large number of
readers has have Mark Twain and Johnathan Swift.
Swift's, "A Modest Proposal," was written in the 1700s
and yet it is still discussed by literary scholars and high
school teachers alike. And while Twain's, "Disgraceful
Persecution Of An Innocent Boy," is not one of his
heralded masterpieces, it deals with the topic of race
relations as does "A Modest Proposal." That their
continued success of these essays is due in no small
part to their respective genius in the field of satirical
writing is obvious. But perhaps when the two pieces
are examined as prototypes of the genre the question
can be answered: Is their continued popularity due, in
part, to a genre that provided them a mode of
expression malleable enough to fit within
ever changing, yet prevailing literary perspectives?
For the purposes of this paper, "literary perspectives"
refers to forms of critical analysis. In Literary Criticism:
An Introduction to Theory and Practice, the subject of
the title is defined as: "the act of studying, analyzing,
interpreting, evaluating, and enjoying a work of art."
Furthermore, three specific critical forms will be used:
Modernism, Postmodernism and Deconstruction. The
two writings of satire will be examined using those
three forms of criticism to reveal that they stand up even
in the face of an ever-evolving view of literary criticism.
Like most writers of "research" papers, I prefer for my
sentences to join with other sentences in the formation
of paragraphs. Ideally, within this framework of
sentences and paragraphs, there will also be several
words. With that in mind I will continue to write
sentences until a sufficient number of paragraphs have
been achieved. Or until the medication kicks in and I
pass out.
Continued
