what does satire mean?
Favorite Answer
Some American writers who utilized satire were Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ken Kesey.
Satire can also be expressed in cartoons, sometimes camouflaged as humor. Charles Schultz and Doug Marlette (who recently died in an automobile accident) are two cartoonists that come to mind.
Satire provides a “legal” avenue to attack a society, the government, and religion with a slim possibility of being prosecuted for a crime.
The Greek philosophers were masters at satire.
Satire is a piece of writing that attacks human vices or follies through the use of irony, sarcasm, or humor.
The purpose of satire is to attack or criticize an issue; however, the means of attack is through humor.
It makes fun of people by using humor.
Have you ever heard of people making fun of the way the President speaks? They can’t say that he sounds stupid; instead they might say, “The United States had a meeting on nuclear power, but the President thought they meant new clear power, so he washed his electrical outlet instead.”
A literary genre whose double derivation, from Latin satura ‘mixture’ and the parodic satyr play, underlines its complex form and motive. The motive includes the exposure of folly and the castigation of vice, with the Latin satirists Horace and Juvenal representing these two extremes. In his Laus stultitiae, the humanist Erasmus used satire as the vehicle for commentary on social and religious malpractice. But satire is also both festive and fictive, and the works of Rabelais and Swift, the plays of Ben Jonson and Molière, and the novels of Dickens are much more than the sum of their moral exhortations. Among modern novelists, Evelyn Waugh, Achebe, and Rushdie are noted for their use of satire. Satire has colonized all literary forms, and in doing so has tended to expose formal conventions themselves. This excess of consciousness explains the overlap between satire, parody, and irony.
Satire (often incorrectly said to be from Latin satira, “medley, dish of colourful fruits” but actually deriving from the Greek satyr play) is an artistic form, 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. It is used in graphic arts and performing arts as well. Although satire is usually witty, and often very funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a clever 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, typically in the hope of shaming it into reform. A very common, almost defining feature of satire is a strong vein of irony or sarcasm. Also, parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are devices frequently used in satirical speech and writing – but it is strictly a misuse of the word to describe as “satire” works without an ironic (or sarcastic) undercurrent of mock-approval, and an element at least of anger. Satirical writing or drama often professes to approve values that are the diametric opposite of what the satirist actually wishes to promote.
