The Age of Satire…

• Alexander Pope– Essay on man, – Rape of the Lock

• Jonathan Swift– A Modest proposal– Gulliver’s Travels

Satire

• Jonathan Swift once said, “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”

• It ridicules people, events, and known literary and popular works.

• The aim of satire is to improve society by showing its weaknesses.

Satire

• Works of satire usually have a specific target, and are usually seen an humorous, although not always by the people at whom they are directed (Politicians, Teachers).

• Like much humor, satire tends to lose its relevance over the course of time.

Satire

• Thus, cartoons that were vastly amusing during the 1900’s may barely elicit a smile from young people today.

• Political cartoons of the Reagan era will be largely unintelligible to students of the twenty-first century.

Satirical cartoons…

Satirical Cartoons…

Jonathan Swift: 1667-1745

• Born in Dublin, Ireland.• At 19, he is employed by

Sir William Temple a powerful English statesman.

• Tutors 8 year old Esther “Stella” Johnson.

• Develops Ménière’s Syndrome, a disturbance of the inner ear.

• 1694: Deacon and later Priest in Dublin

Jonathan Swift

• Falls in love with Jane “Varina” Waring.

• 1696: returns to Temple’s service. Temple dies in1699. Series of clerical jobs in Ireland.

• 1704: Tale of the Tub: satire on corruptions in religion and learning. Also Battle of the Books, a mock-epic on the debate between Ancients and Moderns.

Jonathan Swift

• 1707: Involved with The Tatler. Adopts pseudonym Issac Bickerstaff.

• 1720: Involved with Irish causes.

• 1729: A Modest Proposal• 1726: Gulliver’s Travels• 1742: establishes site for

insane asylum (St. Patrick’s Hospital)

Gulliver’s Travels info…

• In terms of storytelling and construction the parts follow a pattern :

• The causes of Gulliver's misadventures become more malignant as time goes on - he is first shipwrecked, then abandoned, then attacked by strangers, then attacked by his own crew.

• Gulliver's attitude hardens as the book progresses — he is genuinely surprised by the viciousness and politicking of the Lilliputians but finds the behavior of the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the behavior of "civilised" people

Gulliver’s Travels… cont’d

• Each part is the reverse of the preceding part — Gulliver is big/small sensible/ignorant, the countries are sophisticated/simple scientific/natural, forms of Government are worse/better worse/better than England's.

• Gulliver's view between parts contrasts with its other coinciding part — Gulliver sees Lilliputians as vicious and unscrupulous, and the king of Brobdningnag sees Europe in the same light.

• No form of government is ideal — the simplistic Brobingnagians enjoy public executions and have streets infested with beggars, the honest and upright Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to suppress the true nature of Gulliver as a Yahoo and equally unconcerned about his reaction to being expelled

• Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad — Gulliver finds a friend in each of his travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection of and horror toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to England at the novel's end.

• Of equal interest is the character of Gulliver himself — he progresses from a cheery optimist at the start of the first part to the pompous misanthrope of the book's conclusion and we may well have to filter our understanding of the work if we are to believe the final misanthrope wrote the whole work. In this sense Gulliver's Travels is a very modern and complex novel. There are subtle shifts throughout the book, such as when Gulliver begins to see all humans, not just those in Houyhnhnm-land, as Yahoos.

Gulliver’s Travels info… (cont’d)

Satire or Sarcasm?

• What is the difference between satire and sarcasm?

• The writer using sarcasm finds pleasure in hurting.• The writer using satire is like a doctor taking a sharp

scalpel to the mole in order to help the person.• The action hurts at first, but the ultimate intention is

to help – to heal society’s ills.

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

• Sickly as a child – deformed by tuberculosis of the bone

• Raised in a Roman Catholic family, persecuted in the late 17th century in England

• Catholics not allowed to vote, hold office, attend university, or live within 10 miles of London

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

• Because he couldn’t do much, he wrote poetry, studied the classics, and educated himself

• Called life “This long disease”• As an adult – only 4 ½ feet tall• Most of his early writing was

satirical – meant to bring about change (Rape of the Lock)

• Work became more philosophical (Essay on Man)

Alexander Pope

• In 1711, Pope was asked by a friend to write a poem to bring two estranged families together.

• The circumstances of the argument developed when Robert Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor.

True Epic

• A true epic is characterized by great battles, heroic characters, intervening gods, journeys, actions that affect a whole nation, and a lofty elevated style (serious tone).

• In Pope’s mock-epic, most of these conventions are parodied for a comic effect.

Mock-Epic

• A long, humorous, narrative poem that treats a trivial subject in the grand style of a true epic.

• In The Rape of the Lock, Pope applies epic elements to the theft of a lady’s lock of hair:– Boasting speeches of heroes and heroines.– Elaborate descriptions of warriors and their weapons– Involvement of gods and goddesses in the action– Epic similies, elaborate comparisons in the style of

Homer

Epic transformations

• The rape of Helen of Troy becomes the rape of a lock of hair. (Rape meaning theft.)

• The gods become sylphs (slim, graceful girls).• Aeneas’ voyage up the Tiber becomes Benita’s

trip up the Thames.• The battles transform into card games.

Rape of the Lock • Story is based on a true incident b/w two families• Lock – a ringlet of hair• Rape – to steal • So literally – title means “stealing of the hair”• Satire – A work written to “poke fun” at a topic that is

really meant to bring about change – What kinds of satire have you encountered before?

Political Satire? • Known as a “mock epic”

– A long, humorous narrative poem that treats a trivial subject in the grand style of a true epic