Satire - Introduction as a Literary Genre

                  

    SATIRE 

Introduction:-

                 In a small way, everybody is satirist. In one or the other way all satirises our leaders, prime minister, neighbours, etc. The real satirist however differs from most of us, both in strength of his feeling and having wit and genius to express it in novel, or poems, or plays.

Satire is a violent attack of words.

Satire is a genre that sets out to improve bad behaviour through Sarcasm and Irony.

           No doubt, irony, wit, humour, comic description, are the parts of satirical works. The satirist used them a medium or as a weapon. Some of the satirist have become known for their prominent works.

            Many literary works contains element of satire, even when the writers chief purpose was non-satirical. Let's look at some writers who belong to this category.

◾Chaucer:-

                Chaucer was too gentle and humane a man to be a great satirist. In general, he loved the world and his fellow human beings and saw no reason to attack them either. The one thing he hated was the lack of morality of the church - not bitterly or savagely as Milton might have done, but simply laughing at him.

   "The Prelude & The Canterbury Tales" are the best satirical works of Chaucer. Which shows the lack of morality of the church.

◾Shakespeare:-

            Shakespeare is not usually thought of as a satirist yet, there are often satirical touches in his works and some of the plays are almost wholly satirical, "Love's Labour's Lost" is an amusing satirical work on "the sex war".

     "As You Like It" satirises various fashionable features of the 1590s.

   Most of Shakespeare's satire is like Chaucer's - amusing and good-tempered.

Charles Dickens:-

               Dickens was another great writer who, although not generally thought of as a satirist, often used his influence as a novelist to attack and criticise the social injustice of his time. Poverty, Bad education, Inefficiency in government and law, shocking inequality of wealth and so on. 

      In "Little Darrit" Dickens makes a similar, and amusing attack on the well known slowness of government officials in his description of the circumlocution office. Much of his novel is set against of the background of the "Marshalsea debtor's prison", in which Dickens' father (seen in David Copperfield as Mr. Micawber) had spent some time when Dickens was a boy.

Conclusion:-

         Thus, satire is very important form of literature. It indicates the weackdness off human being by simply laughing at him.