Satire

Front 1

What did contemporary writers think about the Hanoverian dynasty?

Back 1

Drew comparisons between their time and the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus, associated with peace, prosperity and the classical achievements of Virgil, Horace, Livy and Ovid.

Front 2

What was the Augustan culture? What did it do?

Back 2

1. A neoclassical culture introduced in the early eighteenth century

2. Operated in the public sphere

3. Prioritised the sober, reasonable and self-controlled person.

4. Used and reinvented classical forms and genres, e.g. epic.

5. Viewed the modern world through a classical lens: classical, learned and new

Front 3

What is the heroic couplet?

Back 3

1. Rhymed pentameter couplets

2. The dominant poetic form of the period

3. Associated with epic or heroic verse due to its 'ambition and seriousness' and its 'potential stateliness and gravity' (Hunter, pp. 21-22)

Front 4

What is the effect of the heroic couplet?

Back 4

Well-suited to reflective and argumentative purposes: rhyme reinforces the sense of logical argument, counter-argument and conclusion.

Front 5

Name two things to keep in mind about the heroic couplet

Back 5

1. It is not about simplicity but about connection and complication

2. Rhyme is often used to connect seemingly disparate ideas.

Front 6

What is the mock heroic?

Back 6

1. A form which belittles and feminises a trivial mode of life.

2. Trivial disagreements depicted in epic form, with spirits and battle scenes.

3. Forces a comparison between trivial and great events through zeugma and disproportion.

4. But also makes the trivial exquisite and offers a commentary on gender, courtship and the exclusion of Catholics from public life.

Front 7

What was the Scriblerus Club?

Back 7

A society of the best satirist.

Front 8

Who were the members of the Scriblerus Club?

Back 8

Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, Dr John Arbuthnot and Rev. Thomas Parnell.

They all worked on a shared project, the spoof biography of an intellectual pedant Martinus Scriblerus, which mocked the contemporary modes of writing and thought.

Front 9

What did the Scriblerus Club do?

Back 9

'shared ideas that ended up as the great individual satires of the period' (Seidel, p. 51)

'Always at issue in the Scriblerian world is the impulse to invade the design of other literary forms and subvert their premises.' (Seidel, p. 53)

Front 10

Describe Swift's satirical style.

Back 10

1. Often adopts the voice of the subject of the satire

2. Often seen as a misanthrope

- defines human beings not as rational animals but as animals capable of reason

- conscious of the vanity, vice, folly and self-delusion of human beings

- reveals those things by reducing the body to its baser functions

3. 'Wisdom and critical discernment' in the reader are 'the allied goals of Swift's satires' (Suarez, p. 112)

Front 11

Pointing to the poet's role as translator, what does Ackroyd say about satire?

Back 11

'satire, which would become an intrinsic aspect of the English imagination, was itself borrowed from European classicism. Thus fluency and dignity are compounded with novelty. Translation had become a means of conflating the tradition and the individual talent.' (p. 200, Albion: The Origins of The English Imagination)

Front 12

What are the three types of satire?

Back 12

1. Juvenalian satire: bitter, indignant, personal attacks against contemporary persons and institutions

2. Horatian satire: gentle, indulgent, wry ridicule of human folly

3. Menippean satire: attacks attitudes and modes of thought rather than individuals, often through formal parody

Front 13

What does Kelly say about Swift's 'Modest Proposal'?

Back 13

Represents 'Swift's overwhelming despair at the failure of contemporary economic wisdom to offer any solution to Ireland's problems' (p. 140, 'Swift on Money and Economics', in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift)

Front 14

What is the context to Swift's 'Modest Proposal'?

Back 14

In the 1720s there was a financial crisis; the harvest failed; forced subordination to British colonial interests. There was lack of food, unemployment and a lack of trade.

Front 15

What is Swift's background?

Back 15

1. Prose satirist, political pamphleteer, poet, (proto) novelist

2. Protestant Anglo-Irish background

3. Went to Kilkeeny College and Trinity College Dublin

4. Ordained priest in 1695

5. Frustrating career due to lack of preferment and Meniere's disease

Front 16

What did Swift write in his 'A Short View of the State of Ireland'?

Back 16

'I would be glad to know by what secret Method it is, that we grow a rich and flourishing People, without Liberty, Trade, Manufacturers, Inhabitants, Money, or the Privilege of Coining; without Industry, Labour, or Improvement of Lands.' (1728)

Front 17

What does Fabricant say about the form of Swift's satire?

Back 17

This 'profoundly occasional work in form as well as content' parodies the economic pamphlets of the period (p. 60)

Front 18

What Fox's views on satire?

Back 18

'satire makes us think critically, instills or restores an awareness of choices.' (p. 9, 'Introduction', in 'The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift' .)

Front 19

What does Suarez say about satire?

Back 19

'satire, for all its comic laughter, must lead us to the painful knowledge of the world's falsity and of our own shortcomings.' (p. 114, 'Swift's Satire and Parody', in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift)

Front 20

What did Swift say about satire?

Back 20

'There are two Ends that Men propose in writing Satyr, private Satisfaction and a publick Spirit, prompting Men of Genius and Virtue, to mend the World as far as they are able.' (Swift, quoted in Suarez, p. 113)

Front 21

What does Seidel say about satire?

Back 21

'Satire tends to end in the same state of disrepair in which it begins.' (p. 56, 'Satire, Lampoon, Libel, Slander', in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift)

'the scope of satire expands in the early eighteenth century to absorb virtually everything modern society can display and produce.' (p. 51)

Front 22

What was the style of 'Augustan' literature?

Back 22

1. Deliberate, elegant artificiality

2. Latinate diction and syntax

3. Periphrasis: roundabout avoidance of common words

4. Heroic couplets

Front 23

How do academics view 'Augustan' culture?

Back 23

1. Combination of 'raillery, analysis and seriousness' (Alexander, p. 185 in A History of English Literature, 2nd edn)

2. 'issue-dominated, highly rhetorical, and centred on present-day happenings' (Hunter, p. 13, 'Couplets and Conversation', in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry)