The Anatomy of Satire

329 Pages·1962·9.11 MB·English

by  Gilbert Highet

THE ANATOMY OF
SATIRE
BY GILBERT HIGHET
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1962 by Gilbert Highet
Published, 196a, by Princeton University Press
L.C. Card 61-12099
ISBN 0-691-01306-3 (paperback edn.)
ISBN 0-691-06005-3 (hardcover edn.)
<·
First PRINCETON PAPERBACK Edition, 1972
•
Parts of the chapter "The Hoax as Satire" were
first printed in Horizon, January, 1961, copyright
© 1961, by Horizon
Title page illustration: The Mocker Mocked, by Paul KIee, 1930
Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of J. B. Neumann
Printed in the United States of America
bv Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means including information storage
and retrieval systems without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
P R E F A C E
IN THE SPRING of ig6o, at the invitation of President
Goheen, I delivered four lectures on satire at Prince­
ton University under the sponsorship of the Spencer
Trask Lecture Fund. This book has grown out of
them.
I am grateful to Princeton for its hospitality, to the
Trask Lecture Fund for giving me the opportunity to
analyze some ideas which had long been in my mind,
and to many friends with whom, in conversation and
through correspondence, I have discussed the prob­
lems of satiric literature.
My special thanks go to Professor James Clifford of
Columbia, Mr. Clifton Fadiman, Sir Alan Herbert,
my son Keith Highet, Professor William Jackson of
Columbia, Miss Ada Pesin of Horizon, Professor
Walter Silz of Columbia, and Miss Constance Win-
chell of the Columbia University Library Reference
Department, with her efficient and courteous staff.
Columbia University, New York G. H.
August 1961

CONTENTS
I. I N T R O D U C T I O N 3-23
Satire is not the greatest form of literature but
one of the most energetic and memorable
forms 3
Examples of satire: 3-13
Monologue: Juvenal on traffic 3
Parody: Pope on the Dark Age 5
Narrative: Voltaire on optimism 8
These are the three main patterns of satire 13-14
How to determine whether a work is satire or
not: !4-23
The author names his genus 15
The author quotes a satiric pedigree 16
The author chooses a traditionally satiric
subject 16
The author quotes an earlier satirist 16
The theme is concrete, personal, topical 16
The vocabulary is forcible and the texture
varied 18
Typical satiric devices are used 18
The satiric emotion is present 21
II. DIATRIBE 24-66
1. THE SATIRIST'S MONOLOGUE 24-52
The beginnings of satire in Rome: 24
Lucilius and Horace 24
The satiric spirit in Greece: 25
Old Comedy 25
Bion of Borysthenes 30
Philosophical criticism 35
Personal abuse 37
Social satire 38
CONTENTS
Satire as the monologue of the satirist: 39
Rome: Lucilius, Horace, Persius,
Juvenal, Claudian 41
Greece: Lucian, Julian the Apostate 42
Dark Age and Middle Age 44
Renaissance and Baroque 47
Modern times: Byron, Hugo, Campbell,
and contemporaries 48
2. v a r i a t i o n s o f t h e s a t i r i c a l
MONOLOGUE 52-66
Satire as the monologue of the victim: 52
Erasmus, Browning 53
Satire as an ironic monologue: 55
Swift's Modest Proposal 57
Satire as a letter 61
Satire as a prearranged dialogue 62
Introvert and extravert monologues 65
III. PARODY 67-147
1. PARODY AND MIMICRY 67-80
Parody differs from distortion and imitation by its
intention and its effect 67
Sometimes it is possible to distinguish formal
parody from material parody: 69
Housman's Fragment of a Greek Tragedy 69
Burns's Holy Willie's Prayer 71
Pegler's My Day 73
Standard Speech to the United Nations 75
Abraham a Sancta Clara 76
Labouchere's God Save the Queen 77
Wordsworth and self-parody 78
2. P A R O D Y O F F O R M A N D PARODY OF
c o n t e n t 80-92
Form and matter interpenetrate in most good
parodies: 80
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CONTENTS
The Battle of Frogs and Mice 80
Byron's Vision of Judgment 83
Titian's Laocoon 89
Musical parodies 90
3. THE HOAX AS SATIRE 92*103
Montgomery's double 92
The Captain of Kopenick 93
The "Dreadnought" hoax 94
Rabelais' prophecies 97
Swift and Partridge 98
Hyacinthe Maglanovitch 99
Spectra 100
Romains' The Pals 102
4. TYPES OF LITERARY PARODY ΙΟ3-147
Mock-heroic and burlesque 103
Parodies of different literary forms:
Ε ρ ι c : 107
Lucilius and Juvenal 107
Battles of animals 107
Boileau's Lectern 107
Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel and
MacFlecknoe 108
Pope's Rape of the Lock and Dunciad 109
Swift, De Callieres, Fielding 109
Joyce's Ulysses 109
Tassoni's Rape of the Bucket 110
Scarron's Vergil Travestied 112
Voltaire's Maid of Orleans 112
ROMANCE: Χ 13
Petronius's Satyrica 114
Rabelais and Ariosto 115
Cervantes' Don Quixote 116
Butler's Hudibras 119
D R A M A : 120
Aristophanes 120
The phlyakes 120
Fielding's Tom Thumb the Great 121
CONTENTS
Shelley's Oedipus Tyrannus 122
Beerbohm's "Savonarola" Brown 122
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida 123
Gay's Beggar's Opera 124
Gilbert and Sullivan 124
"Myra Buttle" 's Sweeniad 125
D I D A C T IC P O E T R Y: J28
Parini's Day 129
l y r i c: 131
Aristophanes and the young Vergil 132
Chaucer's Sir Thopas 132
Swift 133
The Anti-Jacobin 133
Rejected Addresses 134
Calverley and Swinburne 135
Wilson's Omelet of A. MacLeish 136
P R O S E : N O N - F I C T I O N: IG6
Plato's Menexenus 137
Letters of Obscure Men 138
The Menippean Satire 140
Knox's Essays in Satire 142
Jensen's Gettysburg Address in Eisenhowese 143
P R O S E: F I C T I O N:
Fielding's Joseph Andrews 143
Harte's Condensed Novels 144
Beerbohm's Christmas Garland 145
Fadiman on Wolfe 146
De Vries on Faulkner 147
IV. THE DISTORTING
MIRROR 148-230
1. SATIRE AND TRUTH 148-159
Narrative is the third main form of satire 148
The neighbors of satire: 151
Invective and lampoon 151
"Flyting" 152
Comedy and farce 154
The shapes of satirical narrative 156
• xii •
CONTENTS
2. OUT OF THIS WORLD 159"177
STRANGE L A N D S: LFJG
Swift's Gulliver's Travels 159
Jean de Hauteville's Man of Many Sorrows 160
Butler's Erewhon 161
Maurois' Articoles 161
More and Rabelais 162
OTHER WORLDS: 162
Menippus 163
Ariosto and Milton 163
Rabelais' Epistemon 164
Seneca's Pumpkinification of Claudius 165
Julian's Drinking-Party 167
Quevedo's Visions 168
E X T R A - T E R R E S T R I AL V I S I T S: L6G
Voltaire's Micromegas 11°
V I S I O NS OF THE F U T U R E: 171
Bellamy and Wells 171
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 171
Huxley's Ape and Essence 173
Huxley's Brave New World 174
Mayakovsky's Bedbug 174
F A N T A S T I C V O Y A G E S:
Raspe's Munchausen 175
Carroll's Alice 175
Lucian's True History 176
3. ANIMAL TALES 177-190
Reynard the Fox 178
Nigel's Fools' Mirror 179
The Prisoner's Exit 180
Apuleius' Metamorphoses 181
Swift's Houyhnhnms 183
France's Penguin Island 184
Orwell's Animal Farm 185
Aristophanes' Birds and Wasps 186
The Capeks' Insect Comedy 187
Ionesco's Rhinoceros 187
Peacock's Sir Oran Haut-Ton 189
Collier's His Monkey Wife i8g
• xiii •
CONTENTS
4. DISTORTED VISIONS OF
THIS WORLD 190-206
Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet 191
Waugh's Decline and Fall 193
Lewis, Peacock, Huxley 195
McCarthy and Jarrell 196
Dramatic satire 196
T A L E S O F T R A V E L A N D
A D V E N T U R E : 198
Dickens's Pickwick Papers 198
Waugh's Scott-King's Modern Europe 199
Cervantes' Don Quixote 199
Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus 200
Byron's Don Juan 201
Horace's journey to Brindisi 201
Linklater's Juan in America 204
Waugh's Black Mischief and The Loved
One 204
Montesquieu's Persian Letters 205
5. THE STRUCTURE OF SATIRIC
STORIES AND PLAYS 206-213
Episodic: Till Owlglass 207
Improbable: Romains' Dr. Knock 208
Shocking: Rabelais' Panurge 210
Comical: Petronius's Satyrica 211
6 . HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY 213-219
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire 213
Strachey's Eminent Victorians 216
Le Sage's Gil Bias 218
Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan 218
Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great 218
7 . DESCRIPTIVE SATIRE 219-23Ο
T H E H O R R I B L E P A R T Y 221
Petronius's Banquet of Trimalchio 221
Regnier and Boileau 222
Dickens, Waugh, Proust 222