Satire

[Buh4Bee]

Not so long ago, I finished The Sorrows of Young Werther, and realized that it was, in fact, a satire (thank you Pierre Maynard), although it was based partially on Goethe's life as well as his friend who killed himself after falling in love with a married woman. I'd like to read more satires, please list...
Please list your favorite satire and explain how it is influential currently or during the time period it was written.

[Alexander III]

Wait Werther was a satire? I thought it was overthetop, but it seemed all so genuine, and I found it all so very beautiful - geez now I feel like a romantic idiot...dam I find it hard to believe it was a satire :incazzato:

[Buh4Bee]

:lol::lol::lol:

That's exactly the kind of remark I was expecting by being so honest!

Little :devil:

[Heteronym]

I don't believe 'Werther' is a satire. But maybe I say this because I didn't find it funny at all. For me a satire is identified by the fact that it brings attention to its making fun of something or someone. I don't think Goethe was making fun of romantic lovers. I think he was genuine and his sickly, unbearable lover was symptomatic of the age he lived in.

If this is satire, it must be the best kept secret in literature, and Goethe's contemporaries must have been greater fools than all of us since it led to a wave of suicides in Europe. But maybe they killed themselves for the same reason I wanted to slash my wrists while reading it: because it was boring as hell :sick:

[Intuition]

I've never heard Werther classified as satire either. The excessive emotive qualities of Werther belongs to the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang

As for great satires, I believe Don Quixote is a favorite for critics and readers alike, and rightly so. It is both influential in form and content. Aside from that it is also considered (by many) to being the first modern Western novel.

[Buh4Bee]

Jeez, now I really look like a fool, oh excuse, an IDIOT! Well, I read somewhere that I was trying to pull up that it was a satire. Goethe was satirizing how human nature can take our emotions too far. Maybe someone out there can back me up?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

"A Modest Proposal" and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn immediately come to mind. Moby Dick also has some satirical elements.

[OrphanPip]

In English theater there is the Gay's The Beggar's Opera and Fielding's The Author's Farce. They're both satires of the popular theatrical trends of the time, and of course the old staple, hypocrisy.

(Edit: Also, from the same era, Alexander Pope's "epic" poem "The Rape of the Lock," about the struggles between aristocratic families over the theft of a lock of hair.)

[Intuition]

Jeez, now I really look like a fool, oh excuse, an IDIOT! Well, I read somewhere that I was trying to pull up that it was a satire. Goethe was satirizing how human nature can take our emotions too far. Maybe someone out there can back me up?

I'm not sure if I could picture Goethe as a satirist. Wikipedia may not be a great place to quote, but here it goes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werther_effect

Quite a hoax Goethe would have pulled, since so many gentlemen of that era took the novel that seriously.


As Goethe mentioned in the first version of his Römische Elegien, his "youthful sufferings" played a part in the creation of the novel. Having concluded his law studies in the spring 1772, Goethe found himself working for the Imperial Chamber Court of the Holy Roman Empire in Wetzlar. He befriended the secretary Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem and, on June 9, 1772, they attended a ball where Goethe was introduced to the 19-year-old Charlotte Buff and her older fiancé, Johann Christian Kestner. Goethe is said to have instantly fallen in love with Charlotte. Goethe pursued Charlotte and the relationship varied between friendship and rejection. Charlotte was honest with Goethe and told him there was no hope of an affair; she later married Kestner and had a son, August Kestner. On September 11, Goethe left without saying goodbye.

The parallels between this incident and the novel are evident. Charlotte Buff, like her counterpart in the novel, was the daughter of a widowed official and had many siblings. Goethe, like Werther, often found it difficult to complete work. Both Goethe and Werther celebrated their birthdays on August 28. However, the novel also depicts a number of events that have close parallels to the life of Goethe's friend Jerusalem who, like Werther, committed suicide. Goethe was told that the motive for the deed was unrequited love for another man's wife. Jerusalem had also gone on long moonlight walks that reflected his sad mood and had also borrowed pistols to carry out his suicide. And, just like Werther, he left a copy of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's play Emilia Galotti on his cupboard in the room where he died.

I also doubt that Goethe would have treated subjects so close to him, so comically.

In one sense, perhaps you are right too. As Goethe did once say that he "hated Romanticism," although I am not sure if this would drive him to expressing these problems which were so close in proximity-- comically.

[Drkshadow03]

Jeez, now I really look like a fool, oh excuse, an IDIOT! Well, I read somewhere that I was trying to pull up that it was a satire. Goethe was satirizing how human nature can take our emotions too far. Maybe someone out there can back me up?

Didn't Pierre Menard suggest it is a satire to you in a different thread (here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1062977))? You wrote in response to him, "I had not thought of it in terms of satire, but yes, I can see how the book can be classified this way."

[tonywalt]

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Most writing by Benjamin Franklin.

[Buh4Bee]

YES! Then I went on line and must have read some dumb article that said it was a satire or something along those lines. I just feel a wee-bit foolish...

Anyway, it isn't a big deal, my main point is that I want to compile a list of satire to read. I'm particularly interested in reading by foreign authors (non-American).

[Buh4Bee]

Thanks Intuition, for that very comical explanation.

[Intuition]

Anyway, it isn't a big deal, my main point is that I want to compile a list of satire to read. I'm particularly interested in reading by foreign authors (non-American).

Don Quixote
Gulliver's Travels
Candide
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Master and the Margarita

The aforementioned are just a few examples that I can think of, off the top of my head.

[Jive One]

I'd recommend Simplicius Simplicissimus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicius_Simplicissimus), Gargantua and Pantagruel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargantua_and_Pantagruel), and Tom Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_a_Foundling).

[Intuition]

Gargantua and Pantagruel is a brilliant piece of fiction. Deservedly put on any list of great World Literature, let alone satire.

[Heteronym]

The last novel I read was satire: Philip Roth's Our Gang, a ferociously attack on Richard Nixon's presidency by creating Tricky E. Dixon, a master liar and seeker of power who wants to extend the right to vote to the unborn, goes to war with the Boy Scouts, nukes Pro-Pornography Denmark as a way of shifting the voters' attention (more than twenty years before Wag the Dog), and ends up in Hell running against Satan for the title of Prince of Darkness.

It's a hilarious send-up not only of Nixon, but of political language, power, puritanism, the media, political correctness, and political apathy. It's written as as a series of interviews, speeches and news reports, which allows Roth to mimick and mock the tired clichés of the political speeches and the media. I recommend it to everyone. It's still funny forty years later.

[Hawkman]

Going back to the discussion of Goethe, Whether or not you consider Goethe a satirist, he was certainly satirised by Sir Max Beerbohm in 'Zuleika Dobson.' This is an old book now, first published in 1911, but my god, it's still funny as hell. I heartily recommend it.

Live and be well - H

[Seasider]

Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The Dunciad by Pope. Byron's The Vision of Judgement which showed George 111 trying to get into Heaven. The Way of the World, a play by Congreve. Gulliver's Travels und so weite

[Buh4Bee]

Gulliver's Travels has been listed a few times. My husband might like reading that with me. Sounds like a popular one; we've all heard of it.

[Patrick_Bateman]

Master and margarita
Dead Souls
American Psycho