Classical Education and Satire

"Difficile est saturam non scribere." - Juvenal (It is difficult not to write satire.)

The word satire is thought to originate from the Latin word satura for medley, and possibly influenced by Greek satyr plays. The first recorded Roman satirist was the poet Horace, although he also acknowledges Lucilius before him.

In many classical curricula, explicit mention of satire is absent; it may be because satirical literature is often felt to be a "lower" form of expression, and many works may stray over the line of propriety in their invective or ridicule.

Satire has had an important role to play in every place and time, however, and it often reflects the voice of the outside critique, and so it often reflects an important source of dissent and current for reform or change. It is not by any accident that some of the greatest satirists of the literary world had reasons why they may have felt themselves outcasts of one sort or another (Aesop was a slave, Horace's father was a slave, Pope was a Catholic in a Protestant England with a deformed spine, Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels) was an Anglo-Irishman, and Byron and Orwell, Anglo-Scots), and satire with its mockery of power, has always had special appeal among young adults and the mature who might feel they are at the margins.

The boundaries between pure comedy, satire, and invective, are often blurred, but whether the Pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or the Chancery court lawyers in Dicken's Bleak House, well-directed satire can powerfully convict hypocrisy and deceit, swaying the tide of public opinion, and allowing individuals to see others as well as themselves in a completely different lights.

There is much that is good to be found in curricula such as Charlotte Mason's, but young satirists-at-heart will view some of her proponent's "twaddle-free" lists skeptically. And well they should. There is a lot of disagreement what constitutes Great Books, and much variability among the works of Great Authors, too. Satire has been with us throughout the Western Canon. It's been used for many purposes, to get a chuckle out of the reader, to purge the writer, to convict the guilty, and to rescue the downtrodden.

We haven't even really talked about visual satire like political cartoons or musical satire like Gilbert and Sullivan...we'll add them in some follow-up posts.

References:
Horace Picture

Mid-Week Nonsense Poetry: The Diplomatic Platypus

I found this delightful poem in Gilbert Highet's The Art of Satire. Really wonderful!

The Diplomatic Platypus
by Patrick Barrington

I had a duck-billed platypus when I was up at Trinity,
With whom I soon discovered a remarkable affinity.
He used to live in lodgings with myself and Arthur Purvis,
And we all went up together for the Diplomatic Service.
I had a certain confidence, I own, in his ability,
He mastered all the subjects with remarkable facility;
And Purvis, though more dubious, agreed that he was clever,
But no one else imagined he had any chance whatever.

I failed to pass the interview, the board with wry grimaces
Took exception to my boots and then objected to my braces,
And Purvis too was failed by an intolerant examiner
Who said he had his doubts as to his sock-suspender's stamina.
Our summary rejection, though we took it with urbanity
Was naturally wounding in some measure to our vanity;
The bitterness of failure was considerably mollified,
However, by the ease with which our platypus had qualified.

The wisdom of the choice, it soon appeared, was undeniable;
There never was a diplomat more thoroughly reliable.
He never made rash statements his enemies might hold him to,
He never stated anything, for no one ever told him to,
And soon he was appointed, so correct was his behaviour,
Our Minister (without Portfolio) to Trans-Moravia.

My friend was loved and honoured from the Andes to Esthonia,
He soon achieved a pact between Peru and Patagonia,
He never vexed the Russians nor offended the Rumanians,
He pacified the Letts and yet appeased the Lithuanians,
Won approval from his masters down in Downing Street so wholly, O,
He was soon to be rewarded with the grant of a Portfolio.
When on the Anniversary of Greek Emancipation,
Alas! He laid an egg in the Bulgarian Legation.

This untoward occurrence caused unheard-of repercussions,
Giving rise to epidemics of sword-clanking in the Prussians.
The Poles began to threaten, and the Finns began to flap at him,
Directing all the blame for this unfortunate mishap at him;
While the Swedes withdrew entirely from the Anglo-Saxon dailies
The right of photographing the Aurora Borealis,
And, all efforts at rapprochement in the meantime proving barren,
The Japanese in self-defence annexed the Isle of Arran.

My platypus, once thought to be more cautious and more tentative
Than any other living diplomatic representative,
Was now a sort of warning to all diplomatic students
Of the risks attached to negligence, the perils of imprudence,
And, branded in the Honours List as 'Platypus, Dame Vera',
Retired, a lonely figure, to lay eggs in Bordighera.

The Diplomatic Platypus by Patrick Barrington

Resources for Dante's The Divine Comedy

We're just reading excerpts from the Divine Comedy (Inferno) on our current journey through the Middle Ages, but we found some of these sites helpful for visualizing the structure of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

We found this Flash Dante's Inferno site from Eastern Kentucky helpful:

In addition, the Dante Study Guide has helpful listing of symbols, allusions, and discussion points, and different versions of The Divine Comedy in translation are available at Digital Dante