The Literature of Satire [Hardcover]

This is an accessible but sophisticated study of satire from the classics to the present.The Literature of Satire is an accessible but sophisticated and wide-ranging study of satire from the classics to the present in plays, novels, and the press as well as in verse. Knight provides illuminating readings of such satirists familiar and unfamiliar as Horace, Lucian, Jonson, Molière, Swift, Pope, Flaubert, Ostrovsky, Kundera, and Rushdie. This broad-ranging examination sheds new light on the nature and functions of satire as a mode of writing. It will be of interest to scholars interested in literary theory as well as those specifically interested in satire.The Literature of Satire is an accessible but sophisticated and wide-ranging study of satire from the classics to the present in plays, novels, and the press as well as in verse. Knight provides illuminating readings of such satirists familiar and unfamiliar as Horace, Lucian, Jonson, Molière, Swift, Pope, Flaubert, Ostrovsky, Kundera, and Rushdie. This broad-ranging examination sheds new light on the nature and functions of satire as a mode of writing. It will be of interest to scholars interested in literary theory as well as those specifically interested in satire.Ranging from the classics to the present, Charles Knight provides illuminating readings of such satirists as Horace, Lucian, Jonson, Molière, Swift, Pope, Flaubert, Ostrovsky, Kundera, and Rushdie in this study of satire in plays, novels, newsprint and verse. His broad examination sheds new light on the nature and functions of satire as a mode of writing.Acknowledgements; Introduction: the satiric frame of mind; Part I. Satiric Boundaries: 1. Imagination's Cerebrus; 2. Satiric nationalism; 3. Satiric exile; Part II. Satiric Forms: 4. Satire as performance; 5. Horatian performances; 6. Satire and the novel; 7. Literature and the press: the Battle of Dunkirk; 8. White snow and black magic: Karl Kraus and the press; Conclusion; Nl31