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Oct 16, 2020 · As a quietly satirical story about both personal and artistic compromise, Striding Into the Wind hits gently yet effectively, lingering on the notion that success is as much determined by the...
Nov 1, 2023 · Satire essentially means send-up. It is traditionally a form of comedy, but can sometimes be found at the heart of more serious drama. Satire will often ridicule an individual, but the target can also be a group of people or an institution.
With season 3 of Netflix’s ‘Bridgerton’ on its way, here’s a clutch of opulent costume dramas to get your prepped.
- Matthew Singer
- Overview
- Historical definitions
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, parody, caricature, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform.
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 literature—as when one speaks of the satires of the Roman poet Horace or calls the American novelist Nathanael West’s A Cool Million a satire—and, 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.
The terminological difficulty is pointed up by a phrase of the Roman rhetorician Quintilian: “satire is wholly our own” (“satura tota nostra est”). Quintilian seems to be claiming satire as a Roman phenomenon, although he had read the Greek dramatist Aristophanes and was familiar with a number of Greek forms that one would call satiric. But the Greeks had no specific word for satire, and by satura (which meant originally something like “medley” or “miscellany” and from which comes the English satire) Quintilian intended to specify that kind of poem “invented” by Gaius Lucilius, written in hexameters on certain appropriate themes, and characterized by a Lucilian-Horatian tone. Satura referred, in short, to a poetic form, established and fixed by Roman practice. (Quintilian mentions also an even older kind of satire written in prose by Marcus Terentius Varro and, one might add, by Menippus and his followers Lucian and Petronius.) After Quintilian’s day, satura began to be used metaphorically to designate works that were satirical in tone but not in form. As soon as a noun enters the domain of metaphor, as one modern scholar has pointed out, it clamours for extension, and satura (which had no verbal, adverbial, or adjectival forms) was immediately broadened by appropriation from the Greek satyros and its derivatives. The odd result is that the English satire comes from the Latin satura, but satirize, satiric, etc., are of Greek origin. By about the 4th century ce the writer of satires came to be known as satyricus; St. Jerome, for example, was called by one of his enemies “a satirist in prose” (“satyricus scriptor in prosa”). Subsequent orthographic modifications obscured the Latin origin of the word satire: satura becomes satyra, and in England by the 16th century it was written satyre.
Elizabethan writers, anxious to follow Classical models but misled by a false etymology, believed that satyre derived from the Greek satyr play: satyrs being notoriously rude, unmannerly creatures, it seemed to follow that the word satyre should indicate something harsh, coarse, rough. The English author Joseph Hall wrote:
The Satyre should be like the Porcupine,
That shoots sharpe quils out in each angry line,
And wounds the blushing cheeke, and fiery eye,
Of him that heares, and readeth guiltily.
- Robert C. Elliott
Jan 8, 2023 · Shaw’s works are explicitly satiric in nature. Satire is understood to be a work that is comedic and entertaining, whilst subliminally exposing and denouncing vices or abuses of any kind in society (Ebewo, 1997).
Apr 1, 2024 · Sam Holcroft’s “The Mirror” is a thought-provoking drama set in a totalitarian state. Something those brought up in the UK can only read about. I couldn’t say the same for those now sitting in the audience.
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1 day ago · This Psychological Drama With 85% On Rotten Tomatoes Is A Must-Watch If You Love The Shining. Shelley Duvall's performance in Robert Altman's 3 Women is an underrated gem in her career, showcasing her talent in a psychological drama. Altman's dream-inspired concept for 3 Women led to a unique exploration of identity, with Duvall delivering a ...
