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[Latin satira, probably alteration (influenced by Greek satur, satyr, and saturos, burlesque of a mythical episode), of (lanx) satura, fruit (plate) mixture, from feminine of satur, sated, well-fitted.]
noun
satire, a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, or societies to ridicule and scorn. Satire is often an incidental element in literary works that may not be wholly satirical, especially in comedy. Its tone may vary from tolerant amusement, as in the verse satires of the Roman poet Horace, to bitter indignation, as in the verse of Juvenal and the prose of Jonathan Swift (see Juvenalian). Various forms of literature may be satirical, from the plays of Ben Jonson or of Molière and the poetry of Chaucer or Byron to the prose writings of Rabelais and Voltaire. The models of Roman satire, especially the verse satires of Horace and Juvenal, inspired some important imitations by Boileau, Pope, and Johnson in the greatest period of satire—the 17th and 18th centuries—when writers could appeal to a shared sense of normal conduct from which vice and folly were seen to stray. In this classical tradition, an important form is ‘formal’ or ‘direct’ satire, in which the writer directly addresses the reader (or recipient of a verse letter) with satiric comment. The alternative form of ‘indirect’ satire usually found in plays and novels allows us to draw our own conclusions from the actions of the characters, as for example in the novels of Evelyn Waugh or Chinua Achebe. See also lampoon. For a fuller account, consult Arthur Pollard, Satire (1970).
For more information on satire, visit Britannica.com.
satire (Lat. satura, ‘medley’, ‘farrago’, from satur, ‘full’). Quintilian claimed satire as ‘entirely our own’, i.e. a Roman creation: satura quidem tota nostra est (Institutio oratoria x. 1. 93). Although there were satirical elements to be found in Greek literature, notably in Attic Old Comedy (see COMEDY, GREEK
The Satires of Horace (see below), written in the 30s BC, show the strong influence of Lucilius but are more genial in tone, containing no dangerous invective against powerful individuals or serious vices, and the personal slant is charmingly autobiographical. Persius (AD 34–62) also felt Lucilius' influence, but his satires, characterized by earnest Stoic moralizing, contain no direct attacks on individuals. His editor Cornutus toned down a line of verse which the emperor Nero might have resented. Roman satire reached its peak in the Satires of Juvenal (published in the first part of the second century AD), whose bitter denunciations of the vice and folly of his own times (safely attached to names of people of the previous generation) embrace most men and all women.
The genre took a different direction in two brilliant Menippean satires which appeared in the reign of the emperor Nero (AD 54–68), Seneca's Apocolocyntosis, a caricature of the deification of the late emperor Claudius, and the Satyricon of Petronius. In the fourth century AD the emperor Julian wrote (in Greek but in the Roman tradition) the Caesars. The form of Menippean satire, but not the tone or purpose, was followed by Martianus Capella in the Marriage of Mercury and Philology and by Boethius in the Consolation of Philosophy.
A Protean term, satire can be understood as a particular genre with formal characteristics, or as an element or spirit that is present in works of many kinds.
In its restricted definition it means a discourse, usually in verse, mocking or condemning the follies of human beings and the abuses of society. It was present in the Middle Ages, in such forms as the dit, but the term ‘satire’ was not then in use. Du Bellay in his Défense et illustration called for satire on the classical model in place of the medieval coq-à- l'âne. Ronsard in his Discours provided a model of indignant verse in the Juvenalian mode, which is echoed in much of d'Aubigné's Tragiques; similar denunciations of vice are found in the work of the Normandy satirists, Auvray, Angot de l'Éperonnière, Sonnet de Courval, and Du Lorens.
A more light-hearted vein can be traced from Ronsard's folastries and from the Italian Berni to poems of grotesque, often abusive description, where the interest is less in morality than in the pleasure of the game, e.g. the inventive, obscene verse of Sigogne and Motin. The serious and the playful coexist in the satires of Régnier, who established the classic form, written in alexandrines, which Boileau's much imitated Satires were to consecrate. Here the influence of Horace prevails over that of Juvenal. Boileau's prefaces and poems contain many defences of the genre, which was often condemned as low, particularly when, like Boileau, the satirist named names. In spite of such criticism (see Voltaire's Mémoire sur la satire, 1739), satires full of abuse continued to be written throughout the 18th c., not least by Voltaire himself. Gilbert's notorious Le Dix-Huitième Siècle was a model for polemic verse of all tendencies during the Revolutionary period, but the greatest satire of the time was the fierce and formally innovative Iambes of André Chénier.
The same title, Iambes, was used in the next century by Auguste Barbier, for his poems about the Revolution of 1830. In general, however, formal verse satire declined in importance in the 19th c. Béranger's songs pick up a different tradition, that of the political popular song, which had flourished in times of trouble such as the Fronde and the Revolution. Hugo's Les Châtiments are not, for the most part, satires as described above, but in every other sense are a summit in French satirical writing.
A different type of satire is derived from the Latin word satura, meaning a medley or hotchpotch. Such satires are characteristically in prose, or a mixture of prose and verse, and are often just as fiercely committed to political, social, moral, or religious denunciation as Juvenalian verse satire. This vein is illustrated in the 16th c. by Des Périers's Cymbalum Mundi, a set of Lucianesque dialogues, Henri Estienne's Apologie pour Hérodote, and above all the Satire Ménippée. Many other works, often in dialogue form, could be seen as continuing this tradition, though not necessarily with the same vehemence. Several of Voltaire's miscellaneous writings are in fact Menippean satires, including dialogues such as ‘Les ABC’ and works usually included in his Contes, such as ‘Pot-pourri’ or ‘Les Oreilles du comte de Chesterfield’. Diderot actually entitled a brief piece of social observation ‘Satire première’, and gave Le Neveu de Rameau the subtitle ‘Satire seconde’, thus associating it too with a classical form in which disorder reigned.
In its broader sense, which can extend to almost any form of mockery or criticism of people and society, satire is omnipresent in French writing. It is found in pamphlets, in journalism, in songs, in novels and short stories, in poems and plays of many kinds, and is often virtually indistinguishable from comedy. Critics have often associated it rather loosely with a bourgeois (as opposed to a courtly or heroic) way of thinking, but in reality it has not been the property of any social group.
In the Middle Ages the fabliaux and morality plays are full of laughter directed against human weaknesses and pretensions as well as against specific social groups, notably clerics. Miroirs and similar didactic forms are largely satirical in content. Satire is central to the Roman de Renart and the second part of the Roman de la Rose, and it is an important element in the work of Rutebeuf and in Villon's Testament. In the Renaissance period Rabelais's work could arguably be seen as the greatest of all Menippean satires, though very different from the Satire Ménippée itself. Marot's poems contain much playful mockery, while Du Bellay's Regrets are largely sustained by bitter mockery of the alien world of Rome. The social satire already present in medieval farce continues to figure in new types of comedy, and this satirical vein is exploited to the full by comic playwrights in the following two centuries, from Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (Les Visionnaires) to Destouches (Le Glorieux). Recent criticism has tended to play down the satirical element in Molière, focusing rather on the comedy of human inconsistencies and illusions, but there can be no denying the aggressive thrust of Tartuffe or Les Précieuses ridicules.
Otherwise, in the 17th and 18th c. satire thrives in the new genre of the novel, from the comic novels of Scarron or Furetière to the sharply observed scenes of Marivaux or Crébillon fils. Similar amused or censorious pictures are presented by La Fontaine in his Fables (indirectly) and by moralistes such as La Bruyère. In the Enlightenment period there is a tendency for satire to become partisan again, as it had been in the Wars of Religion. Montesquieu, in the Lettres persanes, and Voltaire, in his philosophical tales and a great range of other work in prose and verse, pour scorn on established folly, while their enemies (Palissot, Fréron) respond in kind. Throughout all this period, and above all during the Revolution, there is a massive production of pamphlets, libels, and satirical songs.
In the novels and plays of the last two centuries the satirical representation of French society has been a constant element, as in the work of Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, or Sartre, but it is rarely dominant— Anatole France's L'Île des pingouins may be seen as an exception. The medley tradition of satura can be traced, for instance, in the novels of Queneau or the later work of Céline. But satire has found its purest expression in pamphlet literature and in the press, from the writings of Courier to the journalism of Le Canard enchaîné, Charlie-Hebdo, and the many other sharp-tongued periodicals of Right, Left, and centre.
[Peter France]
Bibliography
Classical Satirists
Outstanding among the classical satirists was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes, whose play The Clouds (423 B.C.) satirizes Socrates as the embodiment of atheism and sophistry, while The Wasps (422) satirizes the Athenian court system. The satiric styles of two Roman poets, Horace and Juvenal, became models for writers of later ages. The satire of Horace is mild, gently amused, yet sophisticated, whereas that of Juvenal is vitriolic and replete with moral indignation; Shakespeare later wrote Horatian satire and Jonathan Swift wrote Juvenalian satire.
The Golden Age of Satire
From the beast fables, fabliaux, and Chaucerian caricatures to the extended treatments of John Skelton, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Erasmus, and Cervantes, the satirical tradition flourished throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, culminating in the golden age of satire in the late 17th and early 18th cent. The familiar names of Swift, Samuel Butler, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, and William Hogarth, in England, and of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, La Fontaine, Molière, and Voltaire, in France, suggest not only the nature of the controversies that provided a target for the satirist's darts in both nations, but also the rediscovery and consequent adaptation of the classical models to individual talents. Pope, for example, wrote The Rape of the Lock (1714), a mock epic about the crisis that occurs when a lock of Lady Belinda's hair is snipped off by a suitor as she sips her coffee. The poem is based upon an actual happening, and Pope's Horatian tone gently castigates the frivolous life of London society. Swift, on the other hand, echoes Juvenal's “savage indignation.” In Gulliver's Travels (1726), Swift exposes humanity in all its baseness and cruelty. Throughout his encounters with the inhabitants of imaginary lands, starting with the Lilliputians and ending with the Houyhnhnms—the latter are horses endowed with noble attributes, while their servants are bestial, filthy humanoids called Yahoos—Gulliver's (and Swift's) misanthropy grows, culminating in his refusal, once he is reunited with his family, to eat with creatures so closely resembling Yahoos.
The Nineteenth Century
In the 19th cent., satire gave way to a more gentle form of criticism. Manners and morals were still ridiculed but usually in the framework of a longer work, such as a novel. However, satire can be found in the poems of Lord Byron, in the librettos of William S. Gilbert, in the plays of Oscar Wilde and G. B. Shaw, and in the fiction of W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Samuel Butler, and many others. American satirists of the period include Washington Irving, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain.
The Twentieth Century
Although 20th-century satire continues to register Horatian or Juvenalian reactions to the enormities of an age dominated by fear of the atom bomb and plagued by pollution, racism, drugs, planned obsolescence, and the abuse of power, critics have discerned some shifts in its source. In some instances the satirist is the audience rather than the artist. Hence the enthusiasm in the 1960s for “camp”—defined by Susan Sontag as meaning works of art that can be enjoyed but not taken seriously, even though they may have been created seriously—indeed, works that are enjoyed for the very qualities that make them second-rate. Sontag's examples of “camp” include Tiffany lamps, the ballet Swan Lake, and the movie Casablanca. Occasionally the audience is the victim of the satire. The so-called put-on, whether a play (Samuel Beckett's Breath, in which breathing is heard on a blacked-out stage), a joke (Lenny Bruce's nightclub routines), or an artifact (John Chamberlain's smashed-up cars), seeks to confuse its audience by presenting the fraudulent as a true work of art, thus rendering the whole concept of “art” questionable. More conventional contemporary satirists of note are Sinclair Lewis, James Thurber, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, W. H. Auden, Philip Roth, and Joseph Heller.
Bibliography
See G. Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (1962); L. Feinberg, The Satirist (1963); A. Kernan, The Plot of Satire (1965); critical anthology ed. by J. Russell and A. Brown (1967); J. R. Clark, ed., Satire—That Blasted Art (1973); M. Seidel, The Satiric Inheritance (1979); H. D. Weinbrot, Eighteenth Century Satire: Essays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter Pindar (1988).
A work of literature that mocks social conventions, another work of art, or anything its author thinks ridiculous. Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan
A literary work, which exposes and ridicules human vices or folly. Historically perceived as tending toward didacticism, it is usually intended as a moral criticism directed against the injustice of social wrongs. It may be written with witty jocularity or with anger and bitterness.
n.
An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.
Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well --
Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
Barney Stims
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
— Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet, from English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
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Satire (from Latin satura, not from the Greek mythological figure satyr[1]) is a literary genre, 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.[2] It is used in graphic arts and performing arts as well. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a witty manner.
Satire usually has a definite target, which may be a person or group of people, an idea or attitude, an institution or a
social practice. It is found in many artistic forms of expression, including literature, plays, commentary, and media such as
song lyrics. Often the target is examined by being held up for ridicule, ideally in the hope of shaming it into reform. A very
common, almost defining feature of satire is a strong vein of irony or
The essential point, however, is that "in satire, irony is militant"[3]. This "militant irony" (or sarcasm) often professes to approve values that are the diametric opposite of what the satirist actually wishes to promote.
The word satire comes from Latin satura lanx and means "medley, dish of colourful fruits", and was defined by Quintilian as a "wholly Roman phenomenon" (satura tota nostra est). To him, the satire was a literary form, but soon it meant the tone of the piece. Robert Elliott wrote:
The Satire of the Trades[5] dates to the beginning of the 2 millennium BC and is one of the oldest texts using hyperbole in order to achieve a didactic aim. It describes the various trades in an exaggeratedly disparaging fashion in order to convince students tired of studying that their lot as scribes will be far superior to that of the ordinary man in the street. Some scholars like Helck [6] think that, rather than satirical, the descriptions were intended to be serious.
The Papyrus Anastasi I[7] (late 2nd millennium BC) contains the text of a satirical letter in which the writer at first praises the virtues but then mercilessly mocks the meagre knowledge and achievements of the recipient of the letter.
The Greek had no word for what later would be called a satire, although cynicism and parody were used. In retrospect, the Greek playwright Aristophanes is one of the best known early satirists; he is particularly famous for his political satire in which he criticized the powerful Cleon (as in The Knights) and for the persecution he underwent.[8][9][10][11]
The oldest form of satire still in use is the Menippean satire by Menippos of
Gadara. His own writings are lost, but his admirers and imitators mix seriousness and mocking in dialogues and parodies before a
background of
In Rome, the first to discuss satire critically was Quintilian, who invented the term to describe the writings of Lucilius. In the 16th century, most believed that the term satire came from the Greek satyr; satyrs were the companions of Dionysos and central characters of the satyr plays of the Theatre of Ancient Greece. Its derivatives satirical and satirise are indeed, but the style of the Roman satire is rather linked to the satira, or satura lanx, a "dish of fruits" resembling the colourful mockings or figuratively a "medley". Pliny reports that the 6th century BC poet Hipponax wrote satirae that were so cruel that the offended hanged themselves.[12] The confusion with the satyr supported the understanding of satire as biting, like Juvenal, and not mild, like Horace, method of criticism in Early Modern Europe until the 17th century.
Criticism of Roman emperors (notably Augustus) needed to be presented in veiled ironical terms - but the term when applied to Latin works actually titled as "satires" is much wider than in the modern sense of the word, including fantastic and highly coloured humorous writing with little or no real mocking intent.
Prominent satirists from Roman antiquity include Horace and Juvenal, who were active during the early days of the Roman Empire and are the two most influential Latin satirists. Other important Roman satirists are Lucilius and Persius.
There are examples of satire from the Early Middle Ages, especially songs by goliards or vagants now best known as an anthology called Carmina Burana and made famous as texts of a composition by the 20th century composer Carl Orff. Satirical poetry is believed to have been popular, although little has survived. With the advent of the High Middle Ages and the birth of modern vernacular literature in the 12th century, it began to be used again, most notably by Chaucer. The disrespectful manner was considered "Unchristian" and ignored but for the moral satire, which mocked misbehavior in Christian terms. Examples are Livre des Manières (~1170), and in some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The epos was mocked, and even the feudal society, but there was hardly a general interest in the genre. After the Middle Ages in the Renaissance reawakening of Roman literary traditions, the satires Till Eulenspiegel and Reynard the Fox were published, and also in Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff (1494), Erasmus' Moriae Encomium (1509) and Thomas More's Utopia (1516).
The Elizabethan (i.e. 16th century English) writers thought of satire as related to the notoriously rude, coarse and sharp satyr play. Elizabethan "satire" (typically in pamphlet form) therefore contains more straight forward abuse than subtle irony. The French Huguenot Isaac Casaubon pointed out in 1605 that satire in the Roman fashion was something altogether more civilised. 17th century English satire once again aimed at the "amendment of vices" (Dryden).
Direct social commentary via satire returned with a vengeance in the 16th century, when farcical texts such as the works of François Rabelais tackled more serious issues (and incurred the wrath of the crown as a result). In the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th century advocating rationality, began the breakthrough of English satire, largely due to the creation of Tory and Whig groups and the necessity to convey the true meaning of criticism, especially true for Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Here, astute and biting satire of institutions and individuals became a popular weapon. Although Isaac Casaubon discovered and published Quintilian's writing and presented the original meaning of the term (satira, not satyr), Early Modern satire was already an established genre, but the sense of wittiness (reflecting the "dishfull of fruits") became more important again.
Jonathan Swift was one of the greatest of Anglo-Irish satirists, and one of the first to practice modern journalistic satire. For instance, his "A Modest Proposal" suggests that poor Irish parents be encouraged to sell their own children as food, or dissenters be slaughtered by the High Church. Swift creates a moral fiction, a world in which parents do not have their most obvious responsibility, which is to protect their children from harm. His purpose is of course to attack indifference to the plight of the desperately poor. John Dryden also wrote an influential essay on satire that helped fix its definition in the literary world.
Obeid e zakani introduced satire into
Ebenezer Cooke, author of "The Sot-Weed Factor," was among the first to bring satire to the British colonies; Benjamin Franklin and others followed, using satire to shape an emerging nation's culture through shaping its sense of the ridiculous.
Mark Twain was a great American satirist: his novel Huckleberry Finn is set in the antebellum South, where the moral values Twain wishes to promote are completely turned on their heads. His hero, Huck, is a rather simple but good-hearted lad who is ashamed of the "sinful temptation" that leads him to help a runaway slave. In fact his conscience – warped by the distorted moral world he has grown up in, often bothers him most when to he is at his best. Ironically, he is prepared to do good, believing it to be wrong.
Twain's younger contemporary Ambrose Bierce gained notoriety as a cynic, pessimist and black humourist with his dark, bitterly ironic stories, many set during the American Civil War, which satirized the limitations of human perception and reason. Bierce's most famous work of satire is probably The Devil's Dictionary, in which the definitions mock cant, hypocrisy and received wisdom.
In the 20th century, satire has been used by authors such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to make serious and even frightening commentaries on the dangers of the sweeping social changes taking place throughout Europe and United States. The film, The Great Dictator (1940) by Charlie Chaplin is a satire on Adolf Hitler. Many social critics of the time, such as Dorothy Parker and H. L. Mencken used satire as their main weapon, and Mencken in particular is noted for having said that "one hoarse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms" in the persuasion of the public to accept a criticism.
The film Dr. Strangelove from
1964 was a popular satire on the Cold War. A more humorous brand of satire enjoyed a
renaissance in the UK in the early 1960s with the Satire Boom, led by such
luminaries as Peter Cook, John Cleese, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller,
In general, so-called popular satire is imprecisely used to cover also caricature and parody as well, whether as text, picture, or sound, or the film which is able to use all three. Even if one work is really a satire, it would naturally still contain another of these elements.
Stephen Colbert’s television program The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of contemporary Western satire. Colbert's character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and unwittingly uses every logical fallacy known to man. In doing so, he demonstrates the principle of modern American satire: the ridicule of the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all their statements and purported beliefs to their furthest (supposedly) logical conclusion, thus revealing their hypocrisy and stupidity.
Cartoonists often use satire as well as straight humour. Garry Trudeau, whose comic strip Doonesbury has charted and recorded every American folly for the last generation, deals with story lines such as Vietnam (and now, Iraq), dumbed-down education, and over-eating at "McFriendly's". Trudeau exemplifies humor mixed with criticism. Recently, one of his gay characters lamented that because he was not legally married to his partner, he was deprived of the "exquisite agony" of experiencing a nasty and painful divorce like heterosexuals. This, of course, satirized the claim that gay unions would denigrate the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Doonesbury also presents an example of how satire can cause social change. The comic strip satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.[13]
Like some literary predecessors, many recent modern so-called satires on television contain satirical elements, but are not satires, but parody or caricature. The most prominent are the animated series Family Guy and The Simpsons, which are parodies, because they mock the form of modern family and social life by taking its presumptions to an extreme. That makes them easily confused with satires, but South Park which is also an animated TV series, is considered not only a satire but one of the notable satires in contemporary popular culture.[14] Animated shows can easily use images of public figures and generally have greater freedom to do so than conventional shows using live actors. Similarly, filmed satire as in the comedy American Dreamz did satirize instant celebrity and the George Bush administration, and was therefore satire rather than caricature. This particular film was later criticized for taking on a "too-easy" target.[15]
Satires and parodies are common on the internet; one of the most prominent examples is the news satire site The Onion, which publishes parodies with satirical content.
Satirical television shows such as Have I Got News For You and They Think It's All Over are also popular on British television. Another example would be The Chaser's War on Everything and The Chaser's other program, CNNNN, which are popular satirical Australian television shows.
Because satire often combines anger and humour it can be profoundly disturbing - because it is essentially ironic or sarcastic, it is often misunderstood.
Common uncomprehending responses to satire include revulsion (accusations of poor taste, or that it's "just not funny" for instance), to the idea that the satirist actually does support the ideas, policies, or people he is attacking.
For instance, at the time of its publication, many people misunderstood Swift’s purpose in "A Modest Proposal" – assuming it to be a serious recommendation of economically-motivated cannibalism.
Some critics of Mark Twain see Huckleberry Finn as racist and offensive while others claim it is one of the most powerful anti-racist works ever written.
Because satire is stealthy criticism, it frequently escapes censorship. Periodically, however, it runs into serious opposition.
In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London George Abbot, whose offices had the function of licensing books for publication in England, issued a decree banning verse satire. The decree ordered the burning of certain volumes of satire by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, Joseph Hall, and others; it also required histories and plays to be specially approved by a member of the Queen's Privy Council, and it prohibited the future printing of satire in verse.[16] The motives for the ban are obscure, particularly since some of the books banned had been licensed by the same authorities less than a year earlier. Various scholars have argued that the target was obscenity, libel, or sedition. It seems likely that lingering anxiety about the Martin Marprelate controversy, in which the bishops themselves had employed satirists, played a role; both Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, two of the key figures in that controversy, suffered a complete ban on all their works. In the event, though, the ban was little enforced, even by the licensing authority itself.
In Italy the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi attacked RAI Television's satirical series, Raiot, Daniele Luttazzi's Satyricon, Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro's Sciuscià, even a special Blob series on Berlusconi himself, by arguing that they were vulgar and full of disrespect to the government. He claimed that he would sue the RAI for 21,000,000 Euros if the show went on. RAI stopped the show. Sabina Guzzanti, creator of the show, went to court to proceed with the show and won the case. However, the show never went on air again.
In 2001 the British television network Channel 4 aired a special edition of the spoof current affairs series Brass Eye, which was intended to mock and satirize the fascination of modern journalism with child molesters and pedophiles. The TV network received an enormous number of complaints from members of the public, who were outraged that the show would mock a subject considered by many to be too "serious" to be the subject of humour.
In 2005, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy caused global protests by offended Muslims and violent attacks with many fatalities in the Near East. It was not the first case of Muslim protests against criticism in the form of satire, but the Western world was surprised by the hostility of the reaction: Any country's flag in which a newspaper chose to publish the parodies was being burnt in a Near East country, then embassies were attacked, killing 139 people in mainly four countries (see article); politicians throughout Europe agreed that satire was an aspect of the freedom of speech, and therefore to be a protected means of dialogue. Iran threatened to start an International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, which was immediately responded to by Jews with a Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoons Contest. Although not really satirical, the response to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses from 1988 was similarly violent; Khomeinei responded with a fatwa, death sentence, for the author, resulting in a 10-year breach of Irano-British diplomatic relations and a continued threat to the author's life.
In 2006 British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen released Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for
Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan a "mockumentary" that satirized
everyone, from high society to frat boys. Criticism of the film was heavy, from claims of antisemitism (forgetting the author is Jewish), to the massive boycott of the film by the
Satire is often prophetic: the jokes precede actual events.[17] Among the eminent examples is the 1784 presaging of modern Daylight saving time, later actually proposed in 1907. While an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin anonymously published a letter in 1784 suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by arising earlier to use morning sunlight.[18] In the 1920s an English cartoonist imagined a very laughable thing for that time: a hotel for cars. He drew a Multi-story car park.[17]
Theories/Critical approaches to satire as a genre:
The Plot of Satire.
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Nederlands (Dutch)
satire, persiflage, spotschrift
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (φιλολογική) σάτιρα, διακωμώδηση
Italiano (Italian)
satira, caricatura
Português (Portuguese)
n. - sátira (f), sarcasmo (m)
Русский (Russian)
сатира, сатирическое произведение
Español (Spanish)
n. - sátira, ironía, sarcasmo
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
讽刺文学, 讽刺
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 諷刺文學, 諷刺
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 풍자, 빈정거림, 풍자 문학
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 風刺, 風刺文学, 皮肉, 当てこすり
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) ألمقطوعه ألهجائيه, هجاء
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - שימוש באירוניה, בסרקזם וכו' לחשיפת טפשות או רוע, סאטירה
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Literary Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Classical Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Grammar Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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