Satire

[Terence]

Thomas,  thanks for your comments. 

"Who are we working for?  M&D

In V., one question asked, is, will you sell out your people
or the human race? 

When we get to the plastic surgeon, we will read: 


"
They will sell out the human race." 

And  

 "the Westchester in the sky where all God's elect, soon or
late, ended up." 

This satire seems to have a target and it seems to suggest
reform, but does it? 

Have you read Steven Weisenburger's Fables of Subversion,
Satire and the American Novel? 

We might consider some of the questions raised by his work
as we read V. 

What is the Object of attack? The target? 

What does it seek to correct? Is it corrective? 

Satire? 

What is it? Is it a  literary work which belittles or
savagely attacks its subject?
Is satire  an  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, or other methods, sometimes with
an intent to bring about improvement? 

What is the distinction, sometimes made between direct and
indirect satire? 

What does it say in my handy Penguin Dictionary of Literary
Terms And Literary Theory. The Third Edition is the one I
have in front of me.  Samuel Johnson sits slouching on its
cover, his portly self, his pink, pig like fist over a page.
The entry for the term Satire is six pages. 

Johnson is quoted on the first page and Swift provides his
now famous definition:

"Satyr is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally
discover everybody's Face but their own."
                --Swift, preface to "Battle of the Books" 

See also, Caricature, Invective, Lampoon, Menippean Satire,
Utopia, 

Moreover, we could include other important terms, say
Personification and Pathetic Fallacy. 

If you have a Classical Literature Companion or Classical
Dictionary and you look up Satire you will find quite a
different entry. 

Here's something on Augustan Satire:  

The term preeminently associated with Augustan literature,
"satire" derives from the
Latin word satura, meaning a medley or mixture--a paella, a
mixed dish, which
Horace used for a genre of poetry he took up from others.
The term is not, in fact,
related to the Greek word satyr..