Theorizing Satire: Essays in Literary Criticism

In its eleven essays, Theorizing Satire reexplores old issues from new perspectives and opens up new dimensions of satire for critical analysis. Adapting to its object of study, this eclectic collection brings to bear upon classical, British, continental, and American satires the insights of New Criticism, philology, rhetorical analysis, anthropology, genre theory, semiotics, deconstruction, cultural criticism, and new historicism. The writers seek useful generalizations about satire, while at the same time offering close readings of individual authors working in a variety of cultural and temporal settings. Focusing on Lucilius to Joe Bob Briggs, the collection discusses, among other things, the verse of Horace, Pope, and Swift; novels from German Enlightenment culture; the operas of W. S. Gilbert; the lyrics of John Berryman; and the postmodernist British campus novel.