satire

[Terence]

In all the works that Campbellkim notes, the satiric element
(he did not make the argument for genre classification) that
involves an Ironic interpenetration of the animate and
inanimate is a important feature. 

Frye is helpful, Weisenburger begins with Frye,  Mendelson
on GR and all those that replied to him. The most important
one I have mentioned and posted quotations from is the Eliot
Braha Dissertation, where he identifies the 15 plus elements
of MS in TRP's work. 

Posted a year back: 


"Thank you for calling Central Services. This has not been a
recording" [Repeat five times and hand up the phone].
--BraZil  

Here is something you may or may not find helpful: 

Here is a condensed list of  Hohmann's take on the "Modern
Menippean Satire" of GR. He combines, Frye, Mendelson,
Bakhtin, and Eliot
Braha (Braha's dissertation, "Menippean Form in GR and Other
Contemporary American Texts." Diss. Columbia Univ. 1979). 

 
1) Carnival
2) quest-motif serves to test philosophical truths
3) the trilevelled construction of "earth," a "nether world"
and an "olympus" 
4) dissolution or merging of identities, in particular, the
motif of the double.
5) extraordinary freedom of philosophical invention within
the plot
6) combination of free fantasy, symbolism and --on
occasion--the mystical religious element with the crude
naturalism of low life
7) the concern with ultimate philosophical positions
8) the experimental fantasticality in the handling of
perspective which can imperceptibly shift from ant's to
bird's view
9) eccentric or scandalous behaviour--spectacular
stomach-turning passages
10) utopian--or, to be more accurate, dystopian--elements of
the quest motif
11) the juxtaposition of items normally distant, often in
oxymoronic combinations
12) the parody of various genres and the mixture of prose
and verse diction
13) the variety of styles
15) topicality and publicistic quality--WWII novel that
illustrates ideological issues of the 1960s

Now this may be of no use to you at all or it may be a bunch
of lit-crit terms. I'll provide an example of any of these
from GR and or several other books if you are interested and
I will explain any term you ask me to define. 

Do you need to know any of this to read GR? NO! Will it
help? It might. Will it hurt? It might, and this is one of
the reasons some teachers of literature advise against
reading lit-crit.