Satire

Front 1

Horatian

Back 1

Tolerant, funny, sophisticated witty, wise, self-effacing and aims to correct through humor. Named for the Roman satirist from the Augustan period in Rome, Horace, this playfully criticizes some social vice through gentle, mild, and light-hearted humor. It directs wit, exaggeration, and self-deprecating humor toward what it identifies as folly, rather than evil. Horatian satire's sympathetic tone is common in modern society.

Front 2

Juvenalian

Back 2

Angry, caustic, personal, relentless, bitter, and serious. Named after an Augustan period’s Roman satirist Juvenal, this type of satire is more contemptuous and abrasive than the Horatian. Juvenalian satire provokes a darker kind of laughter; addresses social evil and points with contempt to the corruption of men and institutions through scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. This form is often pessimistic, characterized by irony, sarcasm, moral indignation and personal invective, with less emphasis on humor.

Front 3

Menippean

Back 3

Spreads its mental barbs at a wide number of targets. It often combines prose and poetry and is set in a variety of unusual settings, such as Alice descending into a rabbit hole in the ground, or a character going down into Hades. It is usually novel length and the author will digress into airing his views on topics that have nothing to do with the plot.

Front 4

Appeals

Back 4

Persuasion to change a point of view or to move others from conviction to action.

Front 5

Logos

Back 5

logical

Front 6

Pathos

Back 6

feeling

Front 7

Ethos

Back 7

credibility

Front 8

Exaggeration

Back 8

To make a person’s vices or beliefs seem ridiculous and unattractive, often tothe point of hyperbole.

Front 9

Understatement

Back 9

To make shocking statements seem casual to emphasize how common thepractice has become.

Front 10

Irony

Back 10

The contrast between reality and expectations in writing.

Front 11

Invective

Back 11

Describes very abusive, usually non-ironical language aimed at a particular target(e.g., a string of curses or name calling). Invective can often be quite funny, but it is the least inventive of the satirist's tools. A lengthy invective is sometimes called a diatribe. The danger of pure invective is that one can quickly get tired of it, since it offers limited opportunity for wit.

Front 12

Caricature

Back 12

Exaggerates one particular feature of the target to achieve a grotesque orridiculous comical and/or satirical effect.

Front 13

Burlesque

Back 13

Ridiculous exaggeration in language which makes the discrepancy between thewords and the situation or the character silly, for example, to have professors speak like foolsor a buffoons speak like. professors.

Front 14

Parody

Back 14

A style which deliberately seeks to ridicule another style. This may involve, in less parody, simply offering up a very silly version of the original. In more skillful parodies,the writer imitates the original very well, pushing it beyond its limits and making it ridiculous.

Front 15

Reductio ad absurdum

Back 15

The author agrees enthusiastically withthe basic assumptions or attitudes he satirizes and, by pushing them to a logically ridiculous extreme, exposes the foolishness of the original attitudes and assumptions.

Front 16

Incongruities

Back 16

events/actions that are not what might be expected, seem inconsonant, arenot becoming or appropriate