Word Finder - satire

definition

A literary device of writing or art which principally ridicules its subject often as an intended means of provoking or preventing change. Humor, irony, and exaggeration are often used to aid this.

definition

A satirical work.

example

a stinging satire of American politics.

definition

Severity of remark.

This poem was a brilliant satire on contemporary manners, and enjoyed an extraordinary success.

There is some truth in the satire, but it wholly misrepresents her rupture with Chopin.

In point of form the satire of Lucilius owed nothing to the Greeks.

These were written in their author's chosen vein of light satire, and Dryden praised them as highly effective within their own range.

In 1559 du Bellay published at Poitiers La Nouvelle Maniere de faire son profit des lettres, a satirical epistle translated from the Latin of Adrien Turnebe, and with it Le Poete courtisan, which introduced the formal satire into French poetry.

Of his works the best known is the Roman Bee-hive (De roomsche byen-korf), published in 1569 during his exile in Friesland, a bitter satire on the faith and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.

But it would be hardly true to say that the animating motive of his satire was political.

The two lastnamed editors alone give the newly discovered lines of Satire vi.

Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived.

However, such idiocy does have the happy consequence that it makes for great satire.

The motive which a writer of satire must have had for secrecy under Domitian is sufficiently obvious; and the necessity of concealment and self-suppression thus imposed upon the writer may have permanently affected his whole manner of composition.

His genius tended naturally in the direction of burlesque and satire.

Lastly, he had the spirit of lively satire and of willingness desipere in loco which frequently goes with the love of books.

In only two points can Rabelais be said to be definitely polemic. He certainly hated the monkish system in the debased form in which it existed in his time; he as certainly hated the brutish ignorance into which the earlier systems of education had suffered too many of their teachers and scholars to drop. At these two things he was never tired of striking, but elsewhere, even in the grim satire of the Chats fourres, he is the satirist proper rather than the reformer.

No one professed a more austere morality, and few medieval writers indulged in cruder satire on the female sex; yet he passed some years in the society of a concubine, and his living masterpiece of art is the apotheosis of chivalrous passion for a woman.

His miscellanies, in some of which his satire made the nearest approach perhaps ever made to the methods of physical force, such as A Meditation upon a Broomstick, and the poems Sid Hamet's Rod, The City Shower, The Windsor Prophecy, The Prediction of Merlin, and The History of Vanbrugh's House, belong to this period.

The keenness of the satire on courts, parties and statesmen certainly suggests that it was planned while Swift's disappointments as a public man were still rankling and recent.

As in the Directions, the satire, though cutting, is good-natured, and the piece shows more animal spirits than usual in Swift's latter years.

It is a bitter satire upon the Greeks.

Beldiman copied a number of ancient chronicles, wrote a satire on the Greeks, and translated and adapted a number of French tragedies and dramas, in verse and prose.

Aaron wrote the Passion, in 10,000 verses (1802; often reprinted); the lyrical romances of Piram Tisbe (1808) and Sofronim si Hdriti (1821); and the humorous Leonat .i Dorofata, a satire on bad women and on drunken husbands, now a chapbook.

The main events in that long struggle were the victory of Argues over Charles, duke of Mayenne, on the 28th of September 1589; 9f Ivr_y, on the 14th of March 1590; the siege of Paris (1590); of Rouen (1592); the meeting of the Estates of the League (1593), which the Satire Menippee turned to ridicule; and finally the conversion of Henry IV.

In 1756 he made his first mark by a satire upon Bolingbroke entitled A Vindication of Natural Society.

As we have seen, Burke's very first piece, the satire on Bolingbroke, sprang from his conviction that merely rationalistic or destructive criticism, applied to the vast complexities of man in the social union, is either mischievous or futile, and mischievous exactly in proportion as it is not futile.

Men of good birth (nearly always, too, of Celtic blood on one side at least), they leave Iceland young and attach themselves to the kings and earls of the north, living in their courts as their henchmen, sharing their adventures in weal and woe, praising their victories, and hymning their deaths if they did not fall by their sides - men of quick passion, unhappy in their loves, jealous of rival poets and of their own fame, ever ready to answer criticism with a satire or with a sword-thrust, but clinging through all to their art, in which they attained most marvellous skill.

The most distinguished writer of that school has been Gestur Palsson (1852-1891), whose short stories with their sharp and biting satire have produced many imitations in Iceland.

At first he was vastly pleased with the city and court of Rome; but his satisfaction ere long turned to discontent, and he gave vent to his ill-humour in a venomous satire on the pope's treasurer, 1MIilliardo Cicala.

Two of the finest works of this early period of the Servian literature of Ragusa are the poem Dervishiyada, written by the Ragusan nobleman Stepan Guchetich (1495-1525), rich in humour and satire, and the poem Yegyupka (" The Gipsy Woman "), written by Andreas Chubranovich (1500-1550), a goldsmith by profession and a very original and clever lyrical poet.

His biting wit involved him in many controversies with well-known contemporaries, such as Lavater, whose science of physiognomy he ridiculed, and Voss, whose views on Greek pronunciation called forth a powerful satire, Ober die Pronunciation der Schopse des alten Griechenlandes (1782).

Not merely did he fight for the Protestant cause as a preacher and theologian, but he was almost the only member of Luther's party who was able to confront the Roman Catholics with the weapon of literary satire.

His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows.

The film succeeds not only in terms of action and suspense but as cautionary fable, historical allegory, social satire and moral disquisition.

All their thoughts are spent in empty declamations and forms of satire or anger, and these do not subdue affections.

Reviews 'The tone is part elegy, part satire, part howl and very, very funny.

High quality satire, such as Peter Cook's famous impersonation of Harold Macmillan, includes impressionism, but is not reducible to it.

Oh, and lest I forget, they were also lampooned on the comedy satire show, ' Not the Nine O'Clock News ' .

Typically, family panto has more satire and obviously bad puns than student panto, and is aimed at both adults and children.

The poem is a typical ' popular ' piece in the alliterative stanza, 91 lines, and is a satire on medical quackery.

We are highly reflexive, and we like everything double - humor, parody, satire, jokes, black comedy and so on.

True defenders of the free world should recognize the need to question the rightness of our actions, and this satire does this brilliantly.

Welcome to the home of Scottish episcopal satire on the world-wide web.

The idea of a scathing religious satire on BBC is now unthinkable.

It is a witty, malicious satire of the English literary world.

The Shysters bloody ' My Bloody Valentine ' was a hilarious romantic satire.

Comedy doesn't get much blacker than this savage satire on terrorism.

What - Poliakoff essentially speculates - would have happened had the 1960s boom in television satire arrived a quarter of a century earlier...?

Comedy Avenue Drives humor to the edge with outrageous news satire.

Moreau is a fabulously blasphemous gothic replay of the Garden of Eden and a Swiftian satire on modern man's self-image.

They particularly enjoy the clown scenes, when much tomfoolery and satire take place.

But as a satire this is very smart stuff with a strong point to make about American triumphalism.