John Gay 's The Beggar 's Opera

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are some of the most widely read and anthologized pieces of medieval poetry. These tales are generally celebrated and enjoyed because of the author’s use of wit and satire, as Chaucer often uses word play and characterization to deliver hard-hitting, yet entertaining truths about his time period. This is the case in “The Miller’s Tale,” which portrays the story of a carpenter with an adulterous wife and the shenanigans that take place during and after one of her affairs. After closely examining “Absalom’s Revenge,” the last section of this tale, it is clear to see that Chaucer uses language, puns, and other writing techniques to provide a commentary on the lewdness of some who lived during the Middle Ages.

During the 17th and early 18th centuries there was a roar of wittiness and logic that came to the forefront of literature in the form of multiple well known Horatian, Juvenalian and Menippean satires (wiseGEEK). The essayist often brought a profound examination and keen persuasive rhetoric that exposed insincere idiocies and outlined the moral and economic decay (wiseGEEK). Satirical works often highlight ideals of reason, order, and social awareness, and thus these works contain a persistent undertone of civility (Holmes). The author superficially uses a façade of conventional traditions, edicts, egotism, and moral codes to incite a new sense of moral and political superiority (Holmes). The satirical literary device was at its peak during the Neoclassical Period in which the enlightenment writer, Jonathan Swift, was exceptional at this writing style (Jokinen). He excelled at rebuking Britain’s flaws and pointed out the hypocrisy at the time by extensive ridicule of the conventual school of thought. Jonathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal is an inspiration to many aspiring satirical authors, as he is admired as a rhetorical virtuoso that shed light on the profuse moral and political decay. He also exposed the corruption in society by using a sly, yet polished voice. An example of a modern work inspired by A Modest Proposal, is Dan Geddes, A Modest Proposal to Convert Shopping Malls into Prisons. Though this is seen obviously in the Dan Geddes’s title of his essay, he also uses

The play Arden of Faversham follows the Renaissance genre of tragedy, yet it focuses on the domestic sphere in the unconventional setting of Arden and Alice’s home, rather than the courtly setting of most tragedies written in the Elizabethan period, in the realm of nobility. While most tragedies following this genre concern themselves with the authority of those in the noble court, Arden of Faversham’s primary concern is with the authority within their own home.

(An analysis of Chaucer’s use of satire to reach his intended audience in his Canterbury Tales)

Year 12 English Text Response – King Henry IV Part I Prompt: Falstaff’s antics can be seen as humorous, but his significance extends beyond comic relief. Just as the Greeks incarnated in their god Dionysus with the paradox of wine; its combined power to inspire and degrade, William Shakespeare has laced Falstaff with this same innate ability as the very incarnation of charm and a liberator of the human spirit in his play King Henry IV Part I. Loosely based upon the knight John Oldcastle, Falstaff’s significance extends far beyond comic relief, as he becomes the primary vessel through which Shakespeare subtly despatches his erudite commentaries on politics upon his audience. Falstaff is both immortal and immoral, and as a self-interested nominalist

While both “Morte Darthur” and “The Miller's Tale” display some characteristics of a satirical approach in which human vices are attacked in a whimsical manner through irony, comedy, and folly, they are actually quite different in their literary genre and style. “Morte Darthur”, an adventurous tale with an imaginary setting that perfectly idealizes the chivalrous knight-hero and his noble deeds done for the love of his lady, is a classic example of a tragic medieval romance. A fabliau, of which “The Miller's Tale” is an example, takes a comical approach with the typically large cast of colorful characters: the blissfully ignorant husband, the

In a quote widely attributed to Molière, he claims to have suffered from “the fault of being a little more sincere than proper,” a flaw that led him to write satirical plays that have stood the test of time. Works like The Misanthrope, The Imaginary Invalid, and Tartuffe still enchant audiences four hundred years after their creation. The reason these plays have survived the rise and fall of the French enlightenment, when they were written, as well as the trials of numerous translations, is their social commentary and unique cutting humor that was not merely a dissection but, rather, a vivisection of the evolving faults and follies of the human race. Molière’s literary scalpel was sharpened by his own education,

In constructing this short essay, I will first start off by touching on Tartuffe and how the writing was purposefully catering to the aristocratic. I will then shift to the analysis of The Country Wife. Finally, I will show the middle class society from The London Merchant breakdown. I will also be using specifics from Tartuffe, The Country Wife and The London Merchant, to show the shift from an aristocratic to middleclass society effected the drama. That being noted, I will begin with Tartuffe.

“Oh the Irony” “Use of Satire in the Canterbury Tales” Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the Father of English literature, and is considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. According to Biography.com, “The Canterbury Tales is by far Chaucer’s best known and most acclaimed work. “Out of the twenty-nine characters, I chose the Wife of Baths Tale, and the Pardoners Prologue, plus Tale, along with the broad selection of the General Prologue. The Canterbury Tales challenges the two institutes of the time, the Church, and the patriarchy using satire.

Satire is a grand literary device used by many authors to subtly make fun of a certain person or group. A way to mock them or make fun of their stupidity, and in the Canterbury tales there is a lot of satire that is discretely hidden between the lines, in forms that may not be so easily noticed in today’s world. Throughout the Canterbury tales, the descriptive lines depict not only fourteenth century England down to the T, but they also reflect Chaucer’s personality and wit. He allowed people to take a deeper look into himself, through the words and descriptions hat can be found in the Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury tales is broken up into many sections and examples of satire can be found in all of them, however, some are more prevalent

Chaucer provides a light hearted tale about a love triangle, using cause and effect style stories, by the pilgrim narrators, to enhance the humour. The use of comedy provides a bawdy feel due to the topic, with lines like ‘This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart, as greet as it had been a thunder-dent.’ The humorous tone allows the tale to be taken with a pinch of salt and require little thought into the deeper meanings for

Jonathan Swift is one of the most famous satirists in Western literature. He held numerous political and religious positions in both England and Ireland. These gave him a great deal of material to work with and use throughout his writing career. It led to two works of fiction that will be discussed in this paper, which are “A Modest Proposal” and “Gulliver's Travels.” It is also important to discover other authors, such as Alexander Pope, within Swift’s literary canon that use satire the way he does and for the same reasons.

Chaucer and Shakespeare have created literature that has lasted for centuries by no coincidental matter. Many similarities link the two men together, but I believe that the most prominent characteristic that the men share is their innovativeness. More specifically their innovative construction of gender confused characters. Dinshaw’s examination of the eunuch Pardoner in her essay “Eunuch Hermeneutics” distinguishes The Pardoner to be a partial character because of his in-between state. Chaucer and Shakespeare’s construction of partial characters reveals that we cannot trust everything to be true in fiction literature and plays on our

The genre of comedy, throughout the history of dramatic art has always served to not only entertain audiences, but to make them aware of their own individual flaws, or flaws that exist in society. (Weitz, E.) Comedy has no precise definition, and its boundaries are broad. One function of comedy however has remained the same - to hold up a mirror to the society of the time but through pleasure, inviting audiences to reflect and also providing amusement. Set in the late nineteenth century, the play An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895) epitomises comedy, as both a literary and dramatic genre. Wilde was masterful in his ability to combine aspects of evolved comedic traditions and dramatic conventions to critique Victorian society. Drawing on characteristics of Greek and Roman tragicomedy, the choices in the play’s plot involves elements of tragedy as well as scenes that serve as comic relief and give the audience a sense of finality through a happy resolution. (Bureman, L) Focussing on the upper class stratum, Wilde employs a comedy of manners Molière style, of the Restoration Period in the seventeenth century in the play by combining forms of comedy with aspects of realist drama. The portrayal of archetypal figures such as Lady Chiltern and Lord Goring satirize rigid moral value of the time and expose their hypocrisies, through dialogue involving irony, wit and humour. Elements of farce and disguises characterized by ‘commedia dell’arte’, a form of comedy first developed in

Medieval comedy, much like modern comedy, relied on certain stereotypical tropes and stock characters, many of which are consistent with those seen in the various plays in Mistero Buffo. An almost introspective look on the jongleur, the oxymoronic “clever fool” in “Death and the Fool” is a speaker of truths beautifully interwoven with lies. “Death and the Fool” also provides the archetypal female characteristic of lavishing in compliments in the almost giddy nature of the female Death. “Murder of the Innocents” also provides several stock characters, including the obedient soldier and the hysterical mother figure, although both are