Comparing Horace's Satire In On Discontent And Modern Times

Satire is a literary manner built on wit and humor with a critical attitude directed to human institutions and humanity.  A successful satiric play will show certain truths about society and then try to improve upon them.  Satire is meant to be constructive rather than destructive.  Aristophanes uses satire in Lysistrata to convey many different themes such as war and peace, the struggles of power and class, and the life and death issues that are seen in war.  Satire is successfully used and seen in Lysistrata by stereotyping women in general and then the different classes of women as well.  Double entendres are seen throughout the play to help add humor to the play.  Sex is

The sloth of governments abroad have led Utopians to pursue lives of group work rather than personal property. In Book I, Hythloday confronts the wealthy as "rapacious, wicked, and useless, while the poor are unassuming, modest

    In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens explores the perception that the value of a man increases with his attainment of material wealth. Dickens probes the truth of such a system of values through Pip's quest for material gain. This quest is the literal pursuit of a better suit of clothing but is conducted without regard for the kind of man wearing the suit. Thus Dickens poses the question: does it profit a man to gain the world at the risk of losing his soul. It is clear, we see, in Great Expectations, that the answer to Dickens's question is no.

A satire is a piece of work that is designed to ridicule or tease a group or organization, generally for the purpose of being humorous. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a play by Oscar Wilde, is a satire, ridiculing class, gender, and marriage. This essay will describe some points from each of these sections, as well as give a brief synopsis of the play these examples come from.

In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, written by Mark Twain, there exists a clear incongruence between nobility and the lower class. While knights and landlords live lavishly without a concern for acquiring basic necessities, peasants often struggle to feed themselves and their families. With so few individuals holding such a large portion of the wealth, a vast gap between the rich and the poor plagues society. For the most part, King Arthur remains completely oblivious to these issues that the lower class faces every day. He ineffectively governs, failing to consider the needs of all people. King Arthur’s interactions with the lower class and his inability to understand peasants’ lifestyles demonstrate the flaws of the monarchy system.

The Roman poet Horace states that “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” By this, he explains the role these hardships play in shaping and developing a person’s character. I agree that adversity not only elicits talents, but also brings out the hidden aptitudes within a person that which they were unaware of before. Through learning experiences and observations, I have witnessed the significant outcomes that come from the result of adversities.

Charles Dickens also uses satire to show the ridiculousness and selfishness of nobility. It is displayed when Monseigneur is receiving his hot chocolate: “Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips,” (Dickens, Page 108). This shows that the nobles were so extravagantly ridiculous, that they required four men simply to help them prepare and drink hot chocolate, whereas any commoner could do it all themselves. An example of selfishness in nobility from A Tale of Two Cities is when Monseigneur states his

In Charriere excerpt from The Nobleman, the use of satire helps the audience understand that privileges can allow for a person to take advantage of a situation or of a person who does not hold the same privileges. The Baron d’Aronville is a good example of what happens to privileges when they have been in the family for generations. Old Aristocratic families only hold there ancientry dear to them because it legitimizes there nobility. Julia, unlike her father, never “consulted Patents of Nobility” and wants nothing to do with her noble heritage or rank. She also “would rather have been thought plebeian than proud” (37). Although ancientry gives people recognition and a title, Charriere reveals that the “most recent nobility is the best” because he works the hardest to maintain the title he has won (38). By using fiction and satire Charriere is clearly able to show the decay of ancient nobles and the misuse of privileges.

Dramatic irony depends on the audience’s knowing something that the character does not, and in this play the audience knows Oedipus faith before he knows it himself. In this play there are several parts where Sophocles conveys his plot through dramatic irony. Dramatic irony underlines how partial human perceptive can be even when it is most reasonable and how agonizing it can be to be the costs of the misinterpretation, in some sense foreseeable. Dramatic irony is also use by Sophocles to make the audience feel their taken part of the play knowing the fate of the main character, making the audience wait in suspense wanting to know how Oedipus would react to his fate. The other use of the dramatic irony was to foreshadow which is a key

Juvenelian Satire To every cop that stakes out a bar at night, I salute you. You coppers are the reason why my ape-sh*t drunk husband gets home safely every night. Y’all just watch him gruggly drive home after a long night at the bar. Without your looming presence my husband would have driven more sporadically and wild.

Horace states, "Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant," meaning that differences in a person's life, meaning misfortunes as a whole, has the ability to change a person's personality and character. This can go two separate ways though, it can make them into a better person, or a worse person. But the overall idea that Horace stated is easy to agree with.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s epistolary essay “A Vindication of the Rights of Men” acts as a direct, scathing response to Edmund Burke’s opinionated piece regarding the French Revolution, “Reflections on the Revolution in France”. This essay will examine the use of satire as a mode in the opening sections of Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication”, as well as comparing her lexical choices to those of her addressee, Edmund Burke. The Oxford English Dictionary states that “satire” is “… [A] work of art which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. [sic] as a form of social or political commentary.” Humour is too exaggerated to relate to Wollstonecraft’s work, but ridicule as a

Complaint poems were often aimed in the sixteenth century at correcting the problem of which the poem's speaker complains; 'in some of these poems the complaint merges with satire to urge correction of man's foolish and vicious behaviour.' Wyatt's 'complaint' poems show an attempt to change the laws of Courtly love and to employ the Renaissance philosophy of 'old freedoms regained,' thereby classifying them as satirical.

It is human nature to expect a lot from the people around us. Expectations are all achievable with effort, but what if those expectations prevented the chance to make our lives extraordinary? Carpe diem, seize the day, it is this principle that makes life worth pursuing, others expectations should not interfere in the making of a pleasant life. In the play, Death of a Salesman, “Oedipus the King”, and the novel Handmaid’s Tale, Willy Loman, Oedipus, and Offred all strive to meet these expectations set by others. In attempts to do so, the main characters decide to prevent their own satisfactory lives for the betterment of the people around them and neglect the potential consequences of

There are two vastly differing works of literature that employ similar elements of satire, whether the story is long or short, essay or novella. In these two works, the authors bring light to ongoing social, political, and philosophical issues of their time and age. The two works I am referring to are Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, and Voltaire’s novella, Candide, or Optimism. In both A Modest Proposal and Candide, there is a portrayal of irony, cold logic and reasoning rather than emotion, and misguided philosophy. Exploring the issues within these texts can implement a better understanding of not only the literature itself, but also the historical context and the issues of the time. By delving even deeper into