The perplexities of satire

Abstract

Juan Francisco Elices Agudo: Historical and Theoretical Approaches toEnglish Satire. Munich: LINCOM, 2004. 200 pp.Satire is a persistent irritant to all who wish to establish a unified theory,or to write a history over the long duration. The word itself is notoriouslyslippery, raising questions of whether it is definable in terms of a core fea-ture, or a related syndrome of characteristics. Surveying the wealth ofmaterials deemed satiric might even lead to the conclusion that the nounhas come to refer to no more than a historically contingent family resem-blance of discursive phenomena, corresponding to no coherent or singularcreative activity. Yet most people, even without the dubious aid of defini-tions, appear to be able to recognize a piece of satire when they read orsee it. With English satire, there is even fair measure of agreement as towho the major satirists have been.Perhaps the problem, then, is less about arriving at a definition than ofknowing how and where to apply one. Nevertheless, to conclude that thecategory is useful only in limited contexts of time, place and activity, andthus is amenable to no single history or theory, may indeed be conceptu-ally rigorous, but does not easily explain the fact of recognition. So, theconceptual itch to find a theoretical solution to a troublesome identityremains. Such imponderables are important and may justify a ratherlengthy assessment of a slim tome devoted to them.Agudo’s book is divided into three main chapters. The first surveysthe history of satire from its putative beginnings as invective in ancientArabic history, Esquimeaux culture and archaic Greece. From there itfocuses on Rome before concentrating mainly on England, rather thanthe range of satire found in the English language as a whole. It endswith the twenty-first century. In the second chapter Agudo catalogues