satire summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see satire.

Horace, bronze medal, 4th century; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

satire, Artistic form in which human or individual vices, folly, 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. Literature and drama are its chief vehicles, but it is also found in such mediums as film, the visual arts (e.g., caricatures), and political cartoons. Though present in Greek literature, notably in the works of Aristophanes, satire generally follows the example of either of two Romans, Horace or Juvenal. To Horace the satirist is an urbane man of the world who sees folly everywhere but is moved to gentle laughter rather than to rage. Juvenal’s satirist is an upright man who is horrified and angered by corruption. Their different perspectives produced the subgenres of satire identified by John Dryden as comic satire and tragic satire.

Andrew Marvell Summary

Andrew Marvell was an English poet whose political reputation overshadowed that of his poetry until the 20th century. He is now considered to be one of the best Metaphysical poets. Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking a B.A. in 1639. His father’s death

Yevgeny Zamyatin Summary

Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian novelist, playwright, and satirist, one of the most brilliant and cultured minds of the postrevolutionary period and the creator of a uniquely modern genre—the anti-Utopian novel. His influence as an experimental stylist and as an exponent of the cosmopolitan-humanist

Thomas Nashe Summary

Thomas Nashe was a pamphleteer, poet, dramatist, and author of The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton (1594), the first picaresque novel in English. Nashe was educated at the University of Cambridge, and about 1588 he went to London, where he became associated with Robert Greene

Samuel Butler Summary

Samuel Butler was a poet and satirist, famous as the author of Hudibras, the most memorable burlesque poem in the English language and the first English satire to make a notable and successful attack on ideas rather than on personalities. It is directed against the fanaticism, pretentiousness,