The New Satire of Augustan England

Abstract

There are many kinds of Augustan satire: Butler's hudibrastic jogtrot, John Oldham's thunderous invective in his Satires upon the Jesuits, Dryden's MacFlecknoe, the moralizing abuse of Defoe's Reformation of Manners, Pope's Imitations of Horace, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Addison's gentle admonishments in the Spectator (if we may call this satire). These satires are not merely different from each other. Most of them represent different conceptions of what satire is. Yet when we use the term "Augustan satire" we usually have a clear idea of what is meant because most satires of this period share a distinctive style, subject matter, imagery, and point of view, which are fundamentally different from those of almost all satire before it. We can say that in the neo-classical period satire comes of age, that it is the first time that satire, as we commonly understand the mode, is written with any consistency, that in fact, this is what we mean by satire. Whatever changes have occurred since the eighteenth century (with possibly one exception, the writers of the absurd) are minor. They have not altered the basic conception of satire established then.