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{{short description|Literary and art genre with a style of humor based on parody}}
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[[File:Punch.jpg|thumb|1867 edition of ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'', a ground-breaking British magazine of popular humour, including a great deal of satire of the contemporary, social, and political scene]]
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The word ''satire'' comes from the [[Latin language|Latin]] word ''satur'' and the subsequent phrase ''[[wikt:satura#Latin|lanx satura]].'' ''Satur'' meant "full" but the juxtaposition with ''lanx'' shifted the meaning to "miscellany or medley": the expression ''lanx satura'' literally means "a full dish of various kinds of fruits".<ref name="Kharpertian">{{cite book|first=Theodore D|last=Kharpertian|contribution=Thomas Pynchon and Postmodern American Satire|pages=25–7|editor-last=Kharpertian|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=um0h0arlUdoC|title=A hand to turn the time: the Menippean satires of Thomas Pynchon|isbn = 9780838633618|year=1990|publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press}}</ref> The use of the word ''lanx'' in this phrase, however, is disputed by B.L. Ullman.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Satura and Satire|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/359771|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210505095643/https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/359771|archive-date=2021-05-05|url-status=live}}</ref>
 
The word ''satura'' as used by [[Quintilian]], however, was used to denote only Roman verse satire, a strict genre that imposed [[hexameter]] form, a narrower genre than what would be later intended as ''satire''.<ref name="Kharpertian"/><ref>{{Citation|title=Satyrica|last=Petronius|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XrNEns3_yd0C&pg=PR24%20xxi|year=1996|language=en|translator-last=Kinney|translator-last2=Branham}}</ref> Quintilian famously said that ''satura,'' that is a satire in hexameter verses, was a literary genre of wholly Roman origin (''satura tota nostra est''). He was aware of and commented on Greek satire, but at the time did not label it as such, although today the origin of satire is considered to be [[Aristophanes' Old Comedy]]. The first critic to use the term "satire" in the modern broader sense was [[Apuleius]].<ref name="Kharpertian"/>
 
To Quintilian, the satire was a strict literary form, but the term soon escaped from the original narrow definition. Robert Elliott writes:
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===20th-century satire===
[[Karl Kraus (writer)|Karl Kraus]] is considered the first major European satirist since [[Jonathan Swift]].<ref name="Knight2004p254">Knight, Charles A. (2004) ''Literature of Satire'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=SOfVePSFctgC&pg=PA254 p.254]</ref> In 20th-century literature, satire was used by English authors such as [[Aldous Huxley]] (1930s) and [[George Orwell]] (1940s), which under the inspiration of [[Yevgeny Zamyatin|Zamyatin]]'s Russian 1921 novel ''[[We (novel)|We]]'', made serious and even frightening commentaries on the dangers of the sweeping social changes taking place throughout Europe. [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]] wrote 'Satire attains its greatest significance when a newly evolving class creates an ideology considerably more advanced than that of the ruling class, but has not yet developed to the point where it can conquer it. Herein lies its truly great ability to triumph, its scorn for its adversary and its hidden fear of it. Herein lies its venom, its amazing energy of hate, and quite frequently, its grief, like a black frame around glittering images. Herein lie its contradictions, and its power.'<ref>[[David King (graphic designer)|David King]] & Cathy Porter 'Blood & Laughter: Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution' Jonathan Cape 1983 p.31</ref> Many social critics of this same time in the United States, such as [[Dorothy Parker]] and [[H. L. Mencken]], used satire as their main weapon, and Mencken in particular is noted for having said that "one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand [[syllogism]]s" in the persuasion of the public to accept a criticism. Novelist [[Sinclair Lewis]] was known for his satirical stories such as ''[[Main Street (novel)|Main Street]]'' (1920), ''[[Babbitt (novel)|Babbitt]]'' (1922), ''[[Elmer Gantry]]'' (1927; dedicated by Lewis to H. L. Mencken), and ''[[It Can't Happen Here]]'' (1935), and his books often explored and satirized contemporary American values. The film ''[[The Great Dictator]]'' (1940) by [[Charlie Chaplin]] is itself a parody of [[Adolf Hitler]]; Chaplin later declared that he would have not made the film if he had known about the [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]].<ref name="ChaplinLager">Chaplin (1964) ''My Autobiography'', p.392, quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made ''The Great Dictator'', I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.}}</ref>
 
Modern [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] satire was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s. This form of satire is recognized by its level of sophistication and intelligence used, along with its own level of parody. Since there is no longer the need of survival or revolution to write about, the modern Soviet satire is focused on the quality of life.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Chapple|first1=Richard L.|last2=Henry|first2=Peter |date=1976|title=Modern Soviet Satire |journal=The Slavic and East European Journal|volume=20|issue=3 |page=318|doi=10.2307/306330|jstor=306330|issn=0037-6752}}</ref>
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<ref name="Andries2000p10">Lise Andries ''Etat des recherche. Présentation'' in ''Dix-Huitième Siècle'' n.32, 2000, special on ''Rire'' p.10, as quoted in Jean-Michel Racault (2005) ''Voyages badins, burlesques et parodiques du XVIIIe siècle'', p.7, quotation: "Le corps grotesque dans ses modalités clasiques – la scatologie notamment – ..."</ref>
 
<ref name="Anspaugh94">Anspaugh, Kelly (1994)'' 'Bung Goes the Enemay': Wyndham Lewis and the Uses of Disgust.'' in ''Mattoid'' (ISSN 0314-5913) issue 48.3, pp.21–29. As quoted in Wilson (2002): {{quotationblockquote|The turd is the ultimate dead object.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Babcock1984">{{Citation | last = Babcock | first = Barbara A. | year = 1984 | contribution = Arrange Me Into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on Ritual Clowning | editor-last = MacAloon | title = Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle}}. Also collected as {{Citation | last = Babcock | first = Barbara A Grimes | editor-last = Ronald | editor-first = L | year = 1996 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=FKZMAAAAYAAJ | title = Readings in ritual studies | page = 5 | publisher = Prentice Hall | isbn = 9780023472534 | quote = Harold Rosenberg has asserted that sociology needs to bring comedy into the foreground, including "an awareness of the comedy of sociology with its disguises", and, like Burke and Duncan, he has argued that comedy provides "the radical effect of self- knowledge which the anthropological bias excludes.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Bevere2006p265">Bevere, Antonio and Cerri, Augusto (2006) ''Il Diritto di informazione e i diritti della persona'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=upIO4EwTwTwC&pg=PA265 pp.265–6] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221122073915/https://books.google.com/books?id=upIO4EwTwTwC&pg=PA265 |date=November 22, 2022 }} quotation: {{quotationblockquote|nella storia della nostra cultura, la satira ha realizzato il bisogno popolare di irridere e dissacrare il ''gotha'' politico ed economico, le cui reazioni punitive non sono certo state condizionate da critiche estetiche, ma dalla tolleranza o intolleranza caratterizzanti in quel momento storico la società e i suoi governanti. (...) la reale esistenza della satira in una società deriva, (...) dal margine di tolleranza espresso dai poteri punitivi dello Stato.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Bloom1979">{{Citation | first1 = Edward Alan | last1 = Bloom | first2 = Lillian D. | last2 = Bloom | year = 1979 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=i5JZAAAAMAAJ | title = Satire's persuasive voice| publisher = Cornell University Press | isbn = 9780801408397 }}.{{Rp| needed = yes|date=October 2012}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Cazeneuve1957p244">Cazeneuve (1957) p.244-5 quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Ils constituent donc pour la tribu un moyen de donner une satisfaction symbolique aux tendances anti-sociales. Les Zunis, précisément parce qu'ils sont un peuple apollinien [où la règle prédomine], avaient besoin de cette soupape de sûreté. Les Koyemshis représentent ce que M. Caillois nomme le « Sacré de transgression ».}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Clark1946p32">{{Citation | last = Clark | first = Arthur Melville | year = 1946 | contribution = The Art of Satire and the Satiric Spectrum | title = Studies in literary modes | page = 32}}</ref>
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<ref name="Clark80p45">{{Citation | last1 = Clark | first1 = John R | last2 = Motto | first2 = Anna Lydia | year = 1980 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=SnwhAQAAIAAJ | title = Menippeans & Their Satire: Concerning Monstrous Leamed Old Dogs and Hippocentaurs | journal = Scholia Satyrica | volume = 6 | issue = 3/4 | page = 45 | quote = [Chapple's book ''Soviet satire of the twenties'']... classifying the very ''topics'' his satirists satirized: housing, food, and fuel supplies, poverty, inflation, "hooliganism", public services, religion, stereotypes of nationals (the Englishman, German, &c), &c. Yet the truth of the matter is that no satirist worth his salt (Petronius, Chaucer, Rabelais, Swift, Leskov, Grass) ever avoids man's habits and living standards, or scants those delicate desiderata: religion, politics, and sex.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Clark91p116">Clark (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=LOeLRDzui_wC&pg=PA116 pp.116–8] quotation: {{quotationblockquote|...religion, politics, and sexuality are the primary stuff of literary satire. Among these sacret targets, matters costive and defecatory play an important part. ... from the earliest times, satirists have utilized scatological and bathroom humor. Aristophanes, always livid and nearly scandalous in his religious, political, and sexual references...}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Coppola">{{Citation | author-link = Jo Coppola | first = Jo | last = Coppola | year = 1958 | journal = [[The Realist]] | issue = 1 | title=An Angry Young Magazine ...| language=en| url=http://www.ep.tc/realist/01/02.html| quote = Good comedy is social criticism—although you might find that hard to believe if all you ever saw were some of the so-called clowns of videoland.... Comedy is dying today because criticism is on its deathbed... because telecasters, frightened by the threats and pressure of sponsors, blacklists and viewers, helped introduce conformity to this age... In such a climate, comedy cannot flourish. For comedy is, after all, a look at ourselves, not as we pretend to be when we look in the mirror of our imagination, but as we really are. Look at the comedy of any age and you will know volumes about that period and its people which neither historian nor anthropologist can tell you.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Davidson 1993p85">[[Hilda Ellis Davidson]] (1993) [https://books.google.com/books?id=QHPYAAAAMAAJ ''Boundaries & Thresholds''] p.85 quotation: {{quotationblockquote|It is this fear of what the dead in their uncontrollable power might cause which has brought forth apotropaic rites, protective rites against the dead. (...) One of these popular rites was the funeral rite of sin-eating, performed by a sin-eater, a man or woman. Through accepting the food and drink provided, he took upon himself the sins of the departed.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Deloria69p146">{{Citation | author-link = Vine Deloria, Jr. | first = Vine | last = Deloria | year = 1969 | title = Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto | chapter = Indian humor | chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=eeIazzLJChMC&pg=PA146 | page = 146 | quote = Irony and satire provide much keener insights into a group's collective psyche and values than do years of [conventional] research| title-link = Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto | publisher = University of Oklahoma Press | isbn = 9780806121291 }} as quoted in {{Citation | first = Allan J | last = Ryan | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EwEDxskm3ycC&pg=PA9 | title = The trickster shift: humour and irony in contemporary native art | page = 9| isbn = 9780774807043 | year = 1999 | publisher = UBC Press }}</ref>
 
<ref name="Duprat1982p178">Duprat, Annie (1982) ''La dégradation de l'image royale dans la caricature révolutionnaire'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=lsrAGZWHpK4C&pg=PA178 p.178] quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Le corps grotesque est una realite populaire detournee au profit d'une representation du corps a but politique, plaquege du corps scatologique sur le corps de ceux qu'il covient de denoncer. Denonciation scatologique projetee sur le corps aristocratique pour lui signifier sa degenerescence.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Durand1984p106">Durand (1984) p.106 quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Déjà Cazeneuve (2) [''Les dieux dansent à Cibola''] avait mis auparavant en relief, dans la Société « apollinienne » des Zuñi, l'institution et le symbolisme saturnal des clowns Koyemshis, véritable soupape de sûreté « dionysienne ».}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Ehrenberg1962p39">{{Citation | author-link = Victor Ehrenberg (historian)| last = Ehrenberg | first = Victor | year = 1962 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=oikOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA39 | title = The people of Aristophanes: a sociology of old Attic comedy | page = 39}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Fo1990p9">Fo (1990) p.9 quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Nella storia del teatro si ritrova sempre questo conflitto in cui si scontrano impegno e disimpegno ... grottesco, satirico e lazzo con sfottò. E spesso vince lo sfotto. tanto amato dal potere. Quando si dice che il potere ama la satira}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Fo1990p2">Fo (1990) pp.2–3 {{quotationblockquote|... Una caricatura che, è ovvio, risulta del tutto bonaria, del tutto epidermica, che indica, come dicevo prima, soltanto la parte più esteriore del loro carattere, i tic la cui messa in risalto non lede assolutamente l'operato, l'ideologia, la morale e la dimensione culturale di questi personaggi. ... ricordando che i politici provano un enorme piacere nel sentirsi presi in giro; è quasi un premio che si elargisce loro, nel momento stesso in cui li si sceglie per essere sottoposti alla caricatura, a quella caricatura. ... Di fatto questa è una forma di comicità che non si può chiamare satira, ma solo sfottò. ... Pensa quanti pretesti satirici si offrirebbero se solo quei comici del "Biberon" volessero prendere in esame il modo in cui questi personaggi gestiscono il potere e lo mantengono, o si decidessero a gettare l'occhio sulle vere magagne di questa gente, le loro violenze più o meno mascherate, le loro arroganze e soprattutto le loro ipocrisie. ...un teatro cabaret capostipite: il Bagaglino, un teatro romano che, già vent'anni fa, si metteva in una bella chiave politica dichiaratamente di estrema destra, destra spudoratamente reazionaria, scopertamente fascista. Nelle pieghe del gruppo del Bagaglino e del suo lavoro c'era sempre la caricatura feroce dell'operaio, del sindacalista, del comunista, dell'uomo di sinistra, e una caricatura bonacciona invece, e ammiccante, accattivante, degli uomini e della cultura al potere}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Fo1990pn">Fo (1990) quotation: {{quotationblockquote|L'ironia fatta sui tic, sulla caricatura dei connotati più o meno grotteschi dei politici presi di mira, dei loro eventuali difetti fisici, della loro particolare pronuncia, dei loro vezzi, del loro modo di vestire, del loro modo di camminare, delle frasi tipiche che vanno ripetendo. ...[lo sfottò è] una chiave buffonesca molto antica, che viene di lontano, quella di giocherellare con gli attributi esteriori e non toccare mai il problema di fondo di una critica seria che è l'analisi messa in grottesco del comportamento, la valutazione ironica della posizione, dell'ideologia del personaggio.}}{{page needed|date=October 2012}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Geisler2005p73">Geisler, Michael E. (2005) ''National Symbols, Fractured Identities: Contesting the National Narrative'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=CLVaSxt-sV0C&pg=PA73 p.73]</ref>
 
<ref name="Hodgart2009p33">Hodgart (2009) ch 2 ''The topics of satire: politics'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=dGrCooK63TsC&pg=PA33 p.33] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221122073814/https://books.google.ca/books?id=dGrCooK63TsC&pg=PA33 |date=November 22, 2022 }} {{quotationblockquote|The most pressing of the problems that face us when we close the book or leave the theatre are ultimately political ones; and so politics is the pre-eminent topic of satire. ...to some degree public affairs vex every man, if he pays taxes, does military service or even objects to the way his neighbour is behaving. There is no escape from politics where more than a dozen people are living together.<br />There is an essential connection between satire and politics in the widest sense: satire is not only the commonest form of political literature, but, insofar as it tries to influence public behaviours, it is the most political part of all literature.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Hodgart2009p39">Hodgart (2009) [https://books.google.com/books?id=dGrCooK63TsC&pg=PA39 p.39]</ref>
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}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Pezzella2009p566">Pezzella, Vincenzo (2009) ''La diffamazione: responsabilità penale e civile'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=TRPEO2aSOvgC&pg=PA566 pp.566–7] quotation: {{quotationblockquote|Il diritto di satira trova il suo fondamento negli artt. 21 e 33 della Costituzione che tutelano, rispettivamente, la libertà di manifestazione del pensiero e quella di elaborazione artistica e scientifica. (...) la satira, in quanto operante nell'ambito di ciò che è arte, non è strettamente correlata ad esigenze informative, dal che deriva che i suoi limiti di liveità siano ben più ammpi di quelli propri del diritto di cronaca}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Pollard1970p66">{{Citation | last = Pollard | first = Arthur | year = 1970 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=TccOAAAAQAAJ | title = Satire | chapter = 4. Tones | page = [https://books.google.com/books?id=TccOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA66 66]}}</ref>
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<ref name="Rosenberg1960p155">{{Citation | author-link = Harold Rosenberg | first = Harold | last = Rosenberg | year = 1960 | title = Community, Values, Comedy | journal = Commentary | volume = 30 | publisher = The [[American Jewish Committee]] | page = 155 | quote = the oldest form of social study is comedy... If the comedian, from Aristophanes to Joyce, does not solve sociology's problem of "the participant observer", he does demonstrate his objectivity by capturing behavior in its most intimate aspects yet in its widest typicality. Comic irony sets whole cultures side by side in a multiple exposure (e.g., ''Don Quixote, Ulysses''), causing valuation to spring out of the recital of facts alone, in contrast to the hidden editorializing of tongue-in-cheek ideologists.}}</ref>
 
<ref name="Test1991p9licencequote">Test (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=QkhMi6mKmUMC&pg=PA9 p.9] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221122073815/https://books.google.com/books?id=QkhMi6mKmUMC&pg=PA9 |date=November 22, 2022 }} quotation: {{quotationblockquote|A surprising variety of societies have allowed certain persons the freedom to mock other individuals and social institutions in rituals. From the earliest times the same freedom has been claimed by and granted to social groups at certain times of the year, as can be seen in such festivals as the Saturnalia, the Feast of Fools, Carnival, and similar folk festivals in India, nineteenth-century Newfoundland, and the ancient Mediterranean world.}}</ref>
<ref name="Test1991p10">Test (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=QkhMi6mKmUMC&pg=PA10 p.10]</ref>
<ref name="Test1991p8">Test (1991) [https://books.google.com/books?id=QkhMi6mKmUMC&pg=PA8 pp.8–9]</ref>
 
<ref name="WieseForbes2010p.xv">Amy Wiese Forbes (2010) The Satiric Decade: Satire and the Rise of Republicanism in France, 1830–1840 [https://books.google.com/books?id=ryI7MnlYAi4C&pg=PR15 p.xv] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221122073815/https://books.google.com/books?id=ryI7MnlYAi4C&pg=PR15 |date=November 22, 2022 }}, quotation: {{quotationblockquote|a critical public discourse (...) Satire rose the daunting question of what role public opinion would play in government. (...) satirists criticized government activities, exposed ambiguities, and forced administrators to clarify or establish policies. Not surprisingly, heated public controversy surrounded satiric commentary, resulting in an outright ban on political satire in 1835 (...) Government officials cracked down on their humorous public criticism that challenged state authority through both its form and content. Satire had been a political resource in France for a long time, but the anxious political context of the July Monarchy had unlocked its political power.
Satire also taught lessons in democracy. It fit into the July Monarchy's tense political context as a voice in favor of public political debate. Satiric expression took place in the public sphere and spoke from a position of public opinion-that is, from a position of the nation's expressing a political voice and making claims on its government representatives and leadership. Beyond mere entertainment, satire's humor appealed to and exercised public opinion, drawing audiences into new practices of representative government.}}</ref>
 
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* {{Citation|last=Test|first=George Austin|year=1991|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QkhMi6mKmUMC|title=Elliott's Bind; or, What Is Satire, Anyway? ''in'' Satire: Spirit & Art|publisher=University of South Florida Press|isbn=9780813010878}}
* {{Citation|last=Wilson|first=R Rawdon|year=2002|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BxSMGjkLbyoC&pg=PA14|title=The hydra's tale: imagining disgust|publisher=University of Alberta|isbn=9780888643681}}.
* Massimo Colella, ''Seicento satirico: Il Viaggio di Antonio Abati (con edizione critica in appendice)'', in «La parola del testo», XXVI, 1-2, 2022, pp. 77-100&nbsp;77–100.
 
==Further reading==
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