satirical

(noun)

Refers to a genre of literature in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, groups, or society itself into improvement.

Related Terms

Examples of satirical in the following topics:

  • Using Satire to Summarize

    • Satire can be a useful tool to draw out the shortcomings of an argument.
    • Satire is one of many strategies that can be used to effectively distinguish your argumentative position from another that you feel is flawed.
    • Satire is a tone that can be deployed in summarizing a position in order to not only draw out its shortcomings, but also to correct or change the shortcomings of the position as well.

  • Neue Sachlichkeit

    • Their art was raw, provocative, and harshly satirical.
    • The verists developed Dada's abandonment of any pictoral rules or artistic language into a "satirical hyperrealism," as termed by Raoul Hausmann, and of which the best known examples are the graphical works and photo-montages of John Heartfield.
    • Satirical scenes often depicted a madness behind what was happening, depicting the participants as cartoon-like.

  • Voltaire

    • One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, of incest with his own daughter, led to an eleven-month imprisonment in the Bastille (after which he adopted the name Voltaire).
    • Most of his prose, including such genres as romance, drama, or satire, was written as polemics with the goal of conveying radical political and philosophical messages.
    • As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

  • Classical Greek Theater

    • Aristophanes, the most important Old Comic dramatist, wrote plays that abounded with political satire, as well as sexual and scatological innuendo.
    • Satire and farce occupied less importance in the works of this time, and mythological themes and subjects were replaced by everyday concerns.
    • Menander’s comedies focused on the fears and foibles of the ordinary man as opposed to satirical accounts of political and public life, which perhaps lent to his comparative success within the genre.

  • The Conflict Perspective

    • A satirical postcard from the Victorian era commenting on a society that is structured so that women are bound by convention to fulfill certain roles and obligations.

  • Expanding Federal Power

    • This political cartoon satirizes the expectation that Roosevelt would hand his policies over to the incoming president, his handpicked successor, Taft.

  • Erasmus

    • One of Erasmus's best-known works is In Praise of Folly, a satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and the western Church in particular, written in 1509.
    • In Praise of Folly starts off with Folly praising herself, after the manner of the Greek satirist Lucian, whose work Erasmus and Sir Thomas More had recently translated into Latin, a piece of virtuoso foolery; it then takes a darker tone in a series of orations, as Folly praises self-deception and madness and moves to a satirical examination of pious but superstitious abuses of Catholic doctrine and corrupt practices in parts of the Roman Catholic Church—to which Erasmus was ever faithful—and the folly of pedants.

  • The Armory Show

    • Art critic Julian Street wrote that the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory" while cartoonists satirized the piece.

  • Analyzing Poetry

    • When we focus on formal similarities, we're concerned with genres, the different types or subcategories a poet has chosen (e.g. epic, lyric, satire).

  • Art and Literature in the Roman Republic

    • The genre of satire was also common in Rome, and satires were written by, among others, Juvenal and Persius.