Horatian Satire

10 Key excerpts on "Horatian Satire"

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  Satire

  Origins and Principles

  • Matthew Hodgart(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  satura lanx was a full dish, and in particular a dish filled with the first fruits of the harvest and offered to Ceres and Bacchus; a kind of cornucopia, it came to mean a medley, farrago or hotch-potch. The Romans believed their earliest satires to have been dramatic medleys in rude 'fescennine' verse, full of coarse raillery and ridicule. According to one Roman tradition, the early Roman poets, Ennius and Pacuvius, removed satire from its dramatic setting, and used the term to describe the more sophisticated verses they wrote on a variety of topics: 'satura', also spelt 'satira', now came to mean a poetical miscellany. Lucilius in the days of the Scipios (late second century BC), developed the form still further, turning it into a moral and political miscellany: his satires were open letters to the public, on matters of politics, morals and literary criticism. He was followed by Horace, who perforce abandoned politics, but kept the form of a moral miscellany. But in fact, Roman satire may be derived more directly from the parabasis or author's monologue of Aristophanic comedy, as Horace himself admits.

  With Horace we are beyond the hazy ground of conjecture, since his work has survived to stamp its mark on formal satire ever since. His earlier works in the genre are called 'satires', his later ones 'epistles', but there is not very much difference between them; both are also called 'sermones' or 'conversations'. That is the essential point about Horatian Satire: it is colloquial, dealing with a variety of not too serious moral, social and literary topics in the easy-going familiar style of a man talking to his intimate friends. The kind of topics he discusses are the folly of running to extremes, the defence of plain living and moderation in all things; the superiority of country to town life, and the simple pleasures of his Sabine farm (illustrated by the fable of the town mouse and the country mouse); another poem is centred on the Stoic maxim nil admirari:

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  Discourses on Satire and on Epic Poetry

  • John Dryden(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  archæa comedia of the Greeks, added many beauties to the first rude and barbarous Roman satire; which sort of poem, though we had not derived from Rome, yet nature teaches it mankind in all ages and in every country.

  It is but necessary that, after so much has been said of satire, some definition of it should be given.  Heinsius, in his Dissertations on Horace, makes it for me in these words:—“Satire is a kind of poetry, without a series of action, invented for the purging of our minds; in which human vices, ignorance, and errors, and all things besides which are produced from them in every man, are severely reprehended—partly dramatically, partly simply, and sometimes in both kinds of speaking, but for the most part figuratively and occultly; consisting, in a low familiar way, chiefly in a sharp and pungent manner of speech, but partly also in a facetious and civil way of jesting, by which either hatred or laughter or indignation is moved.”  Where I cannot but observe that this obscure and perplexed definition, or rather description of satire, is wholly accommodated to the Horatian way, and excluding the works of Juvenal and Persius as foreign from that kind of poem.  The clause in the beginning of it, “without a series of action,” distinguishes satire properly from stage-plays, which are all of one action and one continued series of action.  The end or scope of satire is to purge the passions; so far it is common to the satires of Juvenal and Persius.  The rest which follows is also generally belonging to all three, till he comes upon us with the excluding clause, “consisting, in a low familiar way of speech” which is the proper character of Horace, and from which the other two (for their honour be it spoken) are far distant.  But how come lowness of style and the familiarity of words to be so much the propriety of satire that without them a poet can be no more a satirist than without risibility he can be a man?  Is the fault of Horace to be made the virtue and standing rule of this poem?  Is the grande sophos

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  Critical Essays on Roman Literature

  Satire

  • J. P. Sullivan(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As he was walking down the Sacred Way, recounts the satirist in S. 1.9, a man came up to him and dogged his steps, trying every method imaginable of gaining the satirist’s favour so as to secure an introduction to Maecenas, until fortuitously another person appeared and snatched the first off to a law court on some charge. In the encounter between satirist and the aggressive individual, Horace dramatizes the conflict between the prevalent view of political goals (and of Maecenas’ friends) and the satirist’s genuine desire to devote himself to his friends and poetry. S. 1.10 reverts to the polemic of 1.4; its criticism of Lucilius is more specific, and the satirist now invokes the literary authority of Maecenas and his circle to guarantee his poetic merits. As far as the satirist is concerned, the moral issues of libertas received ample comment in the other nine poems, and he devotes this final poem to an explicit defence of the status of satire, particularly Horatian Satire, as poetry. When a Roman thought about Socrates, he instinctively thought of intelligent conversation on moral topics; then, he might recall that Socrates surrounded himself with talented friends, both literary men and politicians; or he might remember stories about the utter simplicity and healthful nature of Socrates’ life. To this extent, the Horatian satirist feels completely in character. However, if the satirist had lacked another primary trait of the famous Athenian, none of his other qualities would have helped him in the least. That essential trait of Socratic discourse, irony, is likewise an essential feature of Horatian discourse, and this guarantees his Socratic character. The Romans valued irony, for they recognized how difficult it is to achieve the finest type of irony. Some scholars believe that Lucilius intended to achieve an ironic tone, and here and there some of his Satires do in fact lend themselves to such an interpretation

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  Classical Influences on English Poetry

  • J.A.K. Thomson(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt, ‘fools, seeking to escape one set of faults, run into the opposite set’. The third satire (characteristically) pleads for charity in judging the faults and follies of men. In the fourth Horace defends himself against the charge of attacking certain people with excessive asperity. The fifth is really a versified letter or journal describing a trip from Rome to Brindisi. The sixth is autobiographical. The seventh is a mere anecdote, and a stupid one at that. The eighth is put in the mouth of the garden-god Priapus, who describes some black magic he saw. The ninth gives an account of the poet’s encounter with a bore. The tenth defines his relation to Lucilius. In a single short book what a range of interests!

  These ten satires are of very unequal merit. The most celebrated is probably the ninth, in which Horace tells us what he suffered from an importunate acquaintance. The whole charm of the piece lies in the telling. The humour is of the kind (supposed by some to be peculiarly English and American) that takes pleasure in a story against oneself. The satire has often been imitated, but the original is still unrivalled. One can see that it was much in the thoughts of Donne when he was writing his Satyres. It is not addressed to any named person; and, although it is easy to suggest that it is addressed to the reader, the suggestion is not so convincing in the case of an ancient as of a modern poet. It is perhaps more likely that the satire was originally a verse-letter to a friend. When it was published, the reader took the place of the friend. Another way of putting it is to say that Horace makes a friend of the reader. Now that is both true and important. Horace seems to be the first classical author who does this, and it gives him a unique position. His work has the quality of intimacy, a quality absent from the great Athenian poets. It appears in the delightful account of his journey to Brundisium (sat.

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  English Verse Satire 1590-1765

  • Raman Selden(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Joseph Hall presents us with the interesting phenomenon of the Horatian satirist manqué. His satires were not fully appreciated until the eighteenth century when the Horatian elegance of his couplets was remarked by Thomas Warton, who saw how Hall had modified the Juvenalian wild man:

  Hall’s acknowledged patterns are Juvenal and Persius, not without some touches of the urbanity of Horace. His parodies of these poets, or rather his adaptations of ancient to modern manners, a mode of imitation not unhappily practised by Oldham, Rochester and Pope, discover great facility and dexterity of invention. The moral gravity and censorial declamation of Juvenal he frequently enlivens with a train of more refined reflection ... 43

  Warton’s eighteenth-century reflections are summed up well in the sentence, ‘The indignation of the satirist is always the result of good sense’ (p. 367). As a theorist, Hall was perfectly orthodox:

  The Satyre should be like the Porcupine,

  That shoots sharpe quils out in each angry line . . . (p.83) He regrets that he cannot emulate the ‘bolder stile’ of the ancients in his own work, but hopes to pass on the torch to a more vigorous successor: But from the ashes of my quiet stile

  Henceforth may rise some raging rough Lucile . . .

  The arrangement of Virgidemiae (1598) in two groups of satires, three books of ‘tooth-lesse Satyrs’ and three books of ‘byting satyres’, seems to have been an attempt, following J. C. Scaliger’s classification of satire, to write both comic and tragic (or Horatian and Juvenalian) types of satire. The dividing-line between the groups is not always clear, but Hall himself considered that the first book of biting satires ‘doth somewhat resemble the soure and crabbed face of luuvenals’ (p. 99). It is noticeable that in the third book of the toothless satires Hall makes positive use of Horace’s plots and themes,44 but without Horace’s tone of irony and detachment. Hall is decidedly eclectic, but his overt model is certainly Juvenal.45

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  A Mirror to Nature

  Transformations in Drama and Aesthetics 1660–1732

  • Rose A. Zimbardo(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  FOUR The Varietiesof Dramatic Satirein the 1670s

  In “An Essay upon Satyr” Dacier says, “This the reader may observe, that the name of Satyr in Latin is not less proper for Discourses that recommend Virtue than for those which are design’d against Vice.”1 We might think of this observation as marking one extreme of the satiric spectrum, where “gentile satyre” recommends virtue and laughs at the silliness and affectation that make us deviate from standards “so easy to be kept.” Here satire is almost indistinguishable from comedy. At the other end of the spectrum is the satire that Alvin Kernan describes, “Somewhere in his dense knots of ugly flesh the satiric author or painter usually inserts a hint of an ideal that is either threatened with imminent destruction or already dead.”2 Here satire is almost indistinguishable from bleak, unredeemed irony. However, the distinguishing mark of satire is its double, ambivalent vision. However dark or bereft of decency the scene a satire presents, in order to be satire it must suggest an idea of virtue, an ideal, however remote or romantic, for “only the presumption of a good state enables us to call the present satiric one bad.”3 Satire depends upon conceptual contrast and requires the reader or audience to entertain antithetic perspectives simultaneously to arrive at meaning;4 it was therefore the best vehicle for shaping reality, or Nature, as it was conceived in the 1670s.

  Earl Miner has said, “It is not true that Utopias are simply satires in reverse or satires failed Utopias, but by setting out extreme versions of each other, they depend upon each other’s existence to keep them in being. It is this kind of interplay that is the fundamental ‘Natural Rhetorick’ of satire.”5

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  Intratextuality and Latin Literature

  • Stephen J. Harrison, Stavros Frangoulidis, Theodore D. Papanghelis, Stephen Harrison, Stavros Frangoulidis, Theodore D. Papanghelis(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  380 In the main, the theories in question are New Criticism, structuralism, deconstructionism or post-structuralism, and new historicism.

  From the early-mid 1950s onwards, following in the footsteps of earlier critics inspired by New Criticism,381 R.C. Elliott (The Satirist and Society , 1954; The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art , 1960), proposed that a distinction be drawn between the satirical poet as an individual with a concrete historical identity, and his rhetorical and literary role as society’s lampooner, for which he coined the term ‘persona’.382 Alvin Kernan (The Cankered Muse , 1959; The Plot of Satire , 1965) drew on Elliott’s ideas to discuss issues of rhetoric and style in English 17th and 18th century satirical poetry. As we have already pointed out,383 Kernan’s approach was then used by William Anderson to interpret compositions by Horace and Juvenal.

  At the start of the following decade, the same line was taken by G.T. Wright (1960, 7–8), in his study The Poet in the Poem : ‘Poetry, dramatic or lyric, does not present fragments of human experience, but formalized versions of it. The actions represented do not really take place; the persons, including the “I”, do not exist outside the poem, or at least do not exist in the same way.’ And further on: ‘The frequent modern practice of making a clear distinction between a poet and his personae draws attention to the facts that art is formal and that a work of art — even a lyric poem— in which the poet is <…> “too exactly himself” is in danger of not being art at all.’ These thoughts lead effortlessly on to the aphorism that ‘There is no such thing as “I” …; there are only specific men who may assume, among others, these particular formal roles.’ (p. 15 )384

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  The Literary History of England

  Vol 3: The Restoration and Eighteenth Century (1660-1789)

  • Donald F. Bond, G. Sherburn(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7

  Decay of the Genres

  But the constricting rigidity of the classical genres easily drove poets to experiment with other patterns of writing. Some poets could dominate a tradition; most preferred to follow tradition loosely or to follow new or blurred patterns. They were encouraged in departures from the classical by their great admiration for earlier English poets. Shakespeare, whom a wit from Button's coffee-house could call “perhaps the greatest Genius the World ever saw in the Dramatick way” in a newspaper article of 1722, and whom according to Pope in 1737 every playhouse bill styled “the divine,” had a general influence, which became specific at times in the drama.8 Spenser, still called “our arch-poet,” was imitated, though feebly, by several poets,9 among them, Samuel Croxall (d. 1752) and Thomas Purney10 (c. 1717) the riming chaplain in ordinary to Newgate Prison, and more reputably by Prior and James Thomson. John Hughes edited Spenser (1715) with interesting critical essays. Lesser poets claimed disciples also. Ned Ward and the other numerous followers of Hudibras were naturally not regardful of classical tradition. Defoe, whose rough-hewn couplets in his early satires constitute some of the most respectable if least attractive verse of the first decade of the century, could simply write an argument in verse as a more effectual and dignified vehicle than prose, and could write with little or no attention to what classical satirists had done. Narrative poets liked to versify Bible stories— frequently in the Cowleyan form of the ode, which was thought appropriate to the enthusiastic Oriental style—or to invent fables in the manner of Aesop, or fabliaux in the manner of Chaucer, or simply in the manner of one retelling a practical joke. Swift's Baucis and Philemon has a relationship to Ovid, but it has an equally close relationship to English village life. Hardly a volume of miscellanies appeared in the years 1700-1750 that did not contain jocose narratives of rural life. Reflective or discursive poetry, fairly independent of Horace, had been stimulated by Dryden as well as by the philosophic tendencies of the time. Bernard Mandeville's Grumbling Hive (1705) was destined to have fame when made a part of The Fable of the Bees : such a poem carries more weight of thought than an Aesopian fable. Blackmore's Nature of Man (1711), his Creation (1712), and Redemption (1722) are all works that regard very little classical forms while faithfully versifying rationalist doctrines about the duties of man and about the superiority of religious to philosophical solutions of moral problems as then seen. Without denying revelation Blackmore in Creation tries to support religion on the grounds of natural reason. Similar poems appear throughout the century: the most read were Pope's Essay on Man and Young's Night Thoughts . Less known was Aaron Hill's Pindaric Creation

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  A History of Roman Classical Literature.

  • R. W. (Robert William) Browne(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  He was not one to recall the lost and erring to a love of virtue, or to inspire a pure and enthusiastic taste for literature. His prejudices were violent; he could see nothing good in a Greek or a freedman: he hated the new aristocracy with as bitter a hatred as Sallust. As a critic he is ill-natured; as a moralist he is stern and misanthrophic. Mark, for example, the gloomy bitterness with which he speaks of old age, [1093] and contrast it with the bright side of the picture, as drawn by the gentle Cicero in his incomparable treatise. Deficient, however, as he was in the softer affections, his sixteen Satires exhibit an enlightened, truthful, and comprehensive view of Roman manners, and of the inevitable result of such corruption. Those whose moral taste was utterly destroyed would read and listen without profit, but they could not but tremble: his words are truth. The conclusion of the thirteenth Satire is almost Christian. It is unnecessary to quote from an author who is in every scholar’s memory: it would even occupy too much space to make a fair selection from so many fine passages. The eleventh Satire is the most pleasing, and most partaking of the playfulness of Horace. The seventh displays the greatest versatility and the richest fund of anecdote. The twelfth is the most amiable. The description of the origin of civil society in the conclusion of the fifteenth is full of sound sense and just sentiments; whilst the way in which he speaks of the insane bigotry of the Egyptians, exhibits his power of combining pleasantry with dignity. But the two finest Satires are those [1094] which our own Johnson has thought worthy of imitation: one of which (the tenth) Bishop Burnet, in his Pastoral Charge, recommended to his clergy; and the noblest passage in them is that which describes the fall of the infamous Sejanus. [1095] Few men could be so well adapted to transfer the spirit of Juvenal into English as Dr. Johnson

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  Martin Classical Lectures

  • Kenneth J. Reckford(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Then Satires 1.3 turns a corner. It begins with the diatribe satirist criticizing the extremes of inconsistency to which one human being (Tigellius) can go; but the would-be satirist is brought up short by an interruption: “Don’t you have any faults?” In answer, Horace produces a new persona who speaks for tolerance, mutual forbearance, and friendship (amicitia) in human relations. The speaker attacks Stoic absolutism and especially the Stoic paradox that “all sins are equal” (omnia peccata paria), which he counters with Epicurean teachings out of Lucretius; but these twist in his hand, become wickedly self-parodying (thus, the “instant” account of cultural evolution at 99–112), and so discredit the speaker as somewhat ineptus —though less so than his dogmatic, antisocial Stoic opponent. But also, behind the speaker, there emerges still another persona, that of the simple, honest man who is Maecenas's friend: Say, a man is rather simple; he comes forward—the way I’ve often happily done with you, Maecenas—to break in, like a nuisance, on someone's resting or reading; “He's got no common sense,” we say. Oh, how rashly we ratify an unfair law against ourselves! For no one is born without faults. The best man is the one weighted down by least. (Serm. 1.3.63–69) “Rather simple”? Better not count on it. Yet in Satires 1.4–6 Horace develops this self-image with wonderful humor and irony. He is his honest father's honest son (1.4); as a loving friend and companion, he joins Maecenas on a political mission that he doesn’t understand at all (1.5); at Rome, he is no match for critical, envious people, but likes being in Maecenas's circle, where even a shy, innocent freedman's son has his welcome place (1.6; see also his combat with the ambitious bore of 1.9)

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