preview

How Does Cervantes Use Satire In The Dialogue Of The Dog

Better Essays

The overall work of Cervantes in the short story the “Dialogue of the Dogs” is very much a horatian or carnivalesque satire. Cervantes employs the use of a light-hearted joking tone, and continues throughout with the story leading from one extreme scenario to the next leading from a slaughter house at one point, to being a sheep-herding dog. However, there are portions of this novella that are heavier, and crueler, and a show a truer coloring of how Cervantes feels about some major discussion points issues. One of which is about a witch, and her characteristics that depict the rest of a skiving nature of the people surrounding her. Cervantes employs the use juvenalian satire to get his point across to the readers that the individuals who …show more content…

Another type is carnivalesque, which is satire that turns the the world upside down, which unveals the stupidity of the real world surrounding the individuals. Then there’s juvenalian satire, which is the harshest form of satire, and the its use would be to show the worst in society with a very cynical tone and view with a hope for a change in society. Juvenilian satire uses tactics such as words, phrases and implications of harsh and cruel sarcasm along with more unforgiving tactics used to get readers attention, and hopefully to change their perspectives. Another way to phrase it is that juvenalian satire has an air of being “any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism” (The Editors of Encyclopedia…). Cervantes uses the critical and negative approach very convincingly; only during several sections he shows the darker side of what his beliefs are, and the serious misgiving that he has toward the human race and the way that they exibit the devilish part of …show more content…

It comments on the fact that he was not bribed and whipped them to the fullest extent. That comment implies that he was being bribed on many other occasions with the double standard of beating some of the condemned to a pulp when they had been let into his grasp, and then yet again to give some people slack, so that he would be paid more in return for their lack of retribution. This juvenalian device is showing how people can be bought, and criticizing in a round-about way, the fact that they can be bought, and that the law cannot be lain down as it should be. Ironically, it also is depicting how the law should be administered when witchcraft is involved. He depicts witches, in a normal sentencing, to be beaten to the hardest the torturer could handle. However, when there are bribes being taken by the torturer, people do not receive the proper punishment. A law-enforcement official taking a bribe would be detrimental to the system of justice. If every single person in the town were to take bribes though, then the entire city would be a place where judgment could be bought, and where honest people would be thrown to the ground and

Get Access