Blackwell Reference Online

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Satire is the art of holding up to ridicule an individual, or an institution (such as the Church or the government), or a more abstract entity such as “humankind.” Early English verse satirists, for example Thomas Lodge, John Marston, and Joseph Hall, writing at the close of the sixteenth century, were not receptive to the idea that satire was an art. Satire's muse, they considered, was a “snarling” muse, fueled by anger and indignation. The satirist's vocation was to pinpoint abuses, identifying immoral individuals and corrupt institutions, and to speak out about them as plainly as possible. Satire is “telling it like it is.” Sophisticated rhetorical devices that might transform raw indignation into a verbal art, the play of witty intelligence over a subject, could only obstruct the expression of direct criticism. It is unsurprising that the work of Marston and Hall attracted the notice of the censors, and that it was burnt by the public hangman.Several factors operated to change this way of regarding satire, perhaps the most important of which was the increasing frequency, throughout the seventeenth century, of translations of the Roman satirists Horace, Persius, Juvenal, and Martial. After the Restoration of 1660, significant versions of some or all of the poems of Horace were published by Alexander Brome, Abraham Cowley, John Wilmot (the Earl of Rochester), John Oldham, Thomas ... log in or subscribe to read full text