Maria Plaza
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199281114
- eISBN:
- 9780191712739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199281114.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter on persona-oriented humour argues that while it is a valuable insight that the persona is not identical with the author, the gap created between author and persona by humorous ...
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This chapter on persona-oriented humour argues that while it is a valuable insight that the persona is not identical with the author, the gap created between author and persona by humorous undercutting of the latter’s authority must not be exaggerated. By analysing the play of authority, sympathy, and distance enacted around the satiric persona, it is shown that the satirist has an aesthetic interest in a fierce struggle between persona and butt, where the outcome is not obvious. Similarly, a complex, ambivalent persona running the gamut from quasi-object to quasi-author helps in shaping a racy narrative while responsibility remains pending. Humour emerges as the ideal tool for this simultaneous subverting of the speaker and keeping him as the subject who appears to shape most of the text. The chapter explores Horace’s well-calculated self-irony, together with the rougher undermining of the speaker in Persius and Juvenal as examples.Less
This chapter on persona-oriented humour argues that while it is a valuable insight that the persona is not identical with the author, the gap created between author and persona by humorous undercutting of the latter’s authority must not be exaggerated. By analysing the play of authority, sympathy, and distance enacted around the satiric persona, it is shown that the satirist has an aesthetic interest in a fierce struggle between persona and butt, where the outcome is not obvious. Similarly, a complex, ambivalent persona running the gamut from quasi-object to quasi-author helps in shaping a racy narrative while responsibility remains pending. Humour emerges as the ideal tool for this simultaneous subverting of the speaker and keeping him as the subject who appears to shape most of the text. The chapter explores Horace’s well-calculated self-irony, together with the rougher undermining of the speaker in Persius and Juvenal as examples.
Sylvia Harcstark Myers
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198117674
- eISBN:
- 9780191671043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117674.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, Women's Literature
This chapter discusses the observations of women made by painters, poets, and journalists who eventually made bluestockings a part of their work. Bluestockings made learning respectable for women, ...
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This chapter discusses the observations of women made by painters, poets, and journalists who eventually made bluestockings a part of their work. Bluestockings made learning respectable for women, and there were men of good will who made use of learning and good will. Others used bluestockings as a subject for satiric attacks, betraying a feeling of anger.Less
This chapter discusses the observations of women made by painters, poets, and journalists who eventually made bluestockings a part of their work. Bluestockings made learning respectable for women, and there were men of good will who made use of learning and good will. Others used bluestockings as a subject for satiric attacks, betraying a feeling of anger.
John H. Jr. Starks
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199595006
- eISBN:
- 9780191731464
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199595006.003.0015
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, African History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter argues that during the Vandal century of rule in Roman Africa (429‐533 CE), a form of racial profiling and racist thinking expressed through skin colour prejudices against black peoples ...
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This chapter argues that during the Vandal century of rule in Roman Africa (429‐533 CE), a form of racial profiling and racist thinking expressed through skin colour prejudices against black peoples emerges in Latin satiric epigrams from the Anthologia Latina as the power centre shifts between white, ‘neutral‐coloured,’ and black ethnic communities. Black stereotypes of fearful demons and darkness and of repulsive filth and ugliness especially mark black Africans as dangerous ‘others’ infringing on Roman‐African interests. Blacks become another act in the Anthologia Latina's cultural ‘freak show’ of exotic animals and disfranchised outcasts, entertainers, sexual deviants, the disabled, the ugly as constructed by a Mediterranean Roman society ‘neutrally’ and normatively self‐realized between white, ‘Germanic’ Vandal power and black, ‘Moorish’ African marginalization.Less
This chapter argues that during the Vandal century of rule in Roman Africa (429‐533 CE), a form of racial profiling and racist thinking expressed through skin colour prejudices against black peoples emerges in Latin satiric epigrams from the Anthologia Latina as the power centre shifts between white, ‘neutral‐coloured,’ and black ethnic communities. Black stereotypes of fearful demons and darkness and of repulsive filth and ugliness especially mark black Africans as dangerous ‘others’ infringing on Roman‐African interests. Blacks become another act in the Anthologia Latina's cultural ‘freak show’ of exotic animals and disfranchised outcasts, entertainers, sexual deviants, the disabled, the ugly as constructed by a Mediterranean Roman society ‘neutrally’ and normatively self‐realized between white, ‘Germanic’ Vandal power and black, ‘Moorish’ African marginalization.
Jeffrey Wainwright
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719067549
- eISBN:
- 9781781703359
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719067549.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's ...
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Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. The book shows how Hill's words are never lightly ‘acceptable’ but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by—words that are ‘getting it right’. It is a comprehensive critical work on Geoffrey Hill, covering all his work up to Scenes from Comus (2005), as well as some poems yet to appear in book form.Less
Geoffrey Hill has said that some great poetry ‘recognises that words fail us’. This book explores his struggle over fifty years with the recalcitrance of language. It seeks to show how all Hill's work is marked by the quest for the right pitch of utterance whether it is sorrowing, angry, satiric or erotic. The book shows how Hill's words are never lightly ‘acceptable’ but an ethical act, how he seeks out words he can stand by—words that are ‘getting it right’. It is a comprehensive critical work on Geoffrey Hill, covering all his work up to Scenes from Comus (2005), as well as some poems yet to appear in book form.
Kathleen Wellman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300178852
- eISBN:
- 9780300190656
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300178852.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter explores the reasons why Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, was considered an unusual queen of France. Wife of Henry the IV, she was more popularly known ...
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This chapter explores the reasons why Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, was considered an unusual queen of France. Wife of Henry the IV, she was more popularly known as “Queen Margot,” and was one of the most maligned women in French history. Although Marguerite was an accomplished princess, political actor, and renowned intellectual, The Satiric Divorce, a pamphlet published in 1660, depicted an image of her which has prevailed for centuries—that of a woman of deranged, aberrant sexuality. This lurid account is the source of many stories told about Marguerite. It has had enduring credibility largely because it has been assumed for centuries that the distinguished humanist, historian, and Henry II's staunch Huguenot supporter Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne was its author.Less
This chapter explores the reasons why Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henry II and Catherine de Medici, was considered an unusual queen of France. Wife of Henry the IV, she was more popularly known as “Queen Margot,” and was one of the most maligned women in French history. Although Marguerite was an accomplished princess, political actor, and renowned intellectual, The Satiric Divorce, a pamphlet published in 1660, depicted an image of her which has prevailed for centuries—that of a woman of deranged, aberrant sexuality. This lurid account is the source of many stories told about Marguerite. It has had enduring credibility largely because it has been assumed for centuries that the distinguished humanist, historian, and Henry II's staunch Huguenot supporter Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne was its author.
Kerry D. Soper
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032844
- eISBN:
- 9781617032851
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032844.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
In an attempt to do justice to each aspect of Kelly’s work, this chapter begins by exploring the interconnections between the comedy and satire in Pogo. The various visual and verbal tools at work in ...
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In an attempt to do justice to each aspect of Kelly’s work, this chapter begins by exploring the interconnections between the comedy and satire in Pogo. The various visual and verbal tools at work in its comedy can be identified, tracing the roots of Kelly’s narrative conventions and character types—and then speculating on the satiric meanings and uses that emerge from those methods. It is useful to establish Kelly’s own views on the supposed divide between serious satire and lowbrow comedy. It was his pointed social criticism that gave Pogo its conscience, direction, and force. The sillier aspects of Pogo both amplified Kelly’s topical satire and sometimes served as a type of satiric discourse in themselves. These satiric qualities can be recognized by discussing his work within the frames of the carnivalesque, cosmic, and deconstructive.Less
In an attempt to do justice to each aspect of Kelly’s work, this chapter begins by exploring the interconnections between the comedy and satire in Pogo. The various visual and verbal tools at work in its comedy can be identified, tracing the roots of Kelly’s narrative conventions and character types—and then speculating on the satiric meanings and uses that emerge from those methods. It is useful to establish Kelly’s own views on the supposed divide between serious satire and lowbrow comedy. It was his pointed social criticism that gave Pogo its conscience, direction, and force. The sillier aspects of Pogo both amplified Kelly’s topical satire and sometimes served as a type of satiric discourse in themselves. These satiric qualities can be recognized by discussing his work within the frames of the carnivalesque, cosmic, and deconstructive.
Paula McDowell
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226456966
- eISBN:
- 9780226457017
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226457017.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter is the first detailed analysis of the topos of “Billingsgate eloquence” in Restoration and eighteenth-century poetry, periodical essays, novels, rhetorical discourse, and satiric prints. ...
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This chapter is the first detailed analysis of the topos of “Billingsgate eloquence” in Restoration and eighteenth-century poetry, periodical essays, novels, rhetorical discourse, and satiric prints. Billingsgate was a fish market, and Billingsgate fishwives were street vendors who relied on their voices to sell their goods. After providing historical background on these working women, this chapter scrutinizes representations of fishwives' voices in verbal and visual texts. In eighteenth-century Britain, "Billingsgate" came to signify a type of discourse, and this chapter argues that authors and artists used the trope of Billingsgate eloquence to work through growing anxieties pertaining to print commerce and to politeness. Critics used representations of oral discourse to comment on the expanding world of print. A surprising number of depictions of fishwives suggest concerns regarding the consequences of literacy: particularly, traditionally elite oratorical skills supposedly being surrendered through negligence to “vulgar” (sometimes threatening) social groups. Fishwives are often depicted as shaming literate gentlemen. Meanwhile, elocutionists argued that "bookish gentlemen's" reliance on texts was undermining their speaking skills. Examining the relationship between the trope of Billingsgate rhetoric and the oral practices of fishwives can help explain the use of this trope by rhetoricians such as Adam Smith.Less
This chapter is the first detailed analysis of the topos of “Billingsgate eloquence” in Restoration and eighteenth-century poetry, periodical essays, novels, rhetorical discourse, and satiric prints. Billingsgate was a fish market, and Billingsgate fishwives were street vendors who relied on their voices to sell their goods. After providing historical background on these working women, this chapter scrutinizes representations of fishwives' voices in verbal and visual texts. In eighteenth-century Britain, "Billingsgate" came to signify a type of discourse, and this chapter argues that authors and artists used the trope of Billingsgate eloquence to work through growing anxieties pertaining to print commerce and to politeness. Critics used representations of oral discourse to comment on the expanding world of print. A surprising number of depictions of fishwives suggest concerns regarding the consequences of literacy: particularly, traditionally elite oratorical skills supposedly being surrendered through negligence to “vulgar” (sometimes threatening) social groups. Fishwives are often depicted as shaming literate gentlemen. Meanwhile, elocutionists argued that "bookish gentlemen's" reliance on texts was undermining their speaking skills. Examining the relationship between the trope of Billingsgate rhetoric and the oral practices of fishwives can help explain the use of this trope by rhetoricians such as Adam Smith.
Olympia Morata
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226536682
- eISBN:
- 9780226536712
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226536712.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter shows that nearly all of Olympia Fulvia Morata's literary works were lost in the burning of Schweinfurt. Caelius Secundus Curio had preserved her juvenalia, and she copied out some poems ...
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This chapter shows that nearly all of Olympia Fulvia Morata's literary works were lost in the burning of Schweinfurt. Caelius Secundus Curio had preserved her juvenalia, and she copied out some poems for him on her deathbed (Letter Seventy One). Poem Five is not found in the contemporary sources and comes from a collection of 1715. Other works may yet be found. Few of the poems, therefore, can be dated with precision. Three certainly come from Morata's early years at court. Poem One, on her studies, is best placed during her early years of study at Ferrara. “On True Virginity” is a satiric epigram on nuns and supposed celibacy. Though anticlerical themes were common to Catholic and Protestant alike, Morata's language is very close to that of Curio in a letter to her father. The elegant poem on the death of the great Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo must date soon thereafter.Less
This chapter shows that nearly all of Olympia Fulvia Morata's literary works were lost in the burning of Schweinfurt. Caelius Secundus Curio had preserved her juvenalia, and she copied out some poems for him on her deathbed (Letter Seventy One). Poem Five is not found in the contemporary sources and comes from a collection of 1715. Other works may yet be found. Few of the poems, therefore, can be dated with precision. Three certainly come from Morata's early years at court. Poem One, on her studies, is best placed during her early years of study at Ferrara. “On True Virginity” is a satiric epigram on nuns and supposed celibacy. Though anticlerical themes were common to Catholic and Protestant alike, Morata's language is very close to that of Curio in a letter to her father. The elegant poem on the death of the great Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo must date soon thereafter.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226431642
- eISBN:
- 9780226431659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226431659.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the varieties of liberal satire that thrived in the United States in the two decades after World War II. By focusing ...
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This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the varieties of liberal satire that thrived in the United States in the two decades after World War II. By focusing attention on a diverse range of satiric expression, including parody and “sick humor,” this book aims to fill a large gap in the scholarship on twentieth-century American humor. The narrative accounts of humor scholars have centered mainly on literary humor and have seldom addressed the fertile period of the “long fifties.” The effect of such longstanding omissions has been to ratify the idea that, as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued in 1965, the decade of the fifties was “the most humorless period in American history.” An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less
This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the varieties of liberal satire that thrived in the United States in the two decades after World War II. By focusing attention on a diverse range of satiric expression, including parody and “sick humor,” this book aims to fill a large gap in the scholarship on twentieth-century American humor. The narrative accounts of humor scholars have centered mainly on literary humor and have seldom addressed the fertile period of the “long fifties.” The effect of such longstanding omissions has been to ratify the idea that, as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. argued in 1965, the decade of the fifties was “the most humorless period in American history.” An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226431642
- eISBN:
- 9780226431659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226431659.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
With the early retirement of Bill Mauldin, the task of translating moral anger at McCarthyism, Southern segregationists, and the inertia of the Eisenhower administration into political cartoons, ...
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With the early retirement of Bill Mauldin, the task of translating moral anger at McCarthyism, Southern segregationists, and the inertia of the Eisenhower administration into political cartoons, cartoon strips, and drawings fell to Herbert Block, Walt Kelly, and Robert Osborn, the focus of this chapter. At a time when satiric cartooning was in retreat, Mauldin, Block, Kelly, and Osborn kept the tradition of angry graphic commentary alive.Less
With the early retirement of Bill Mauldin, the task of translating moral anger at McCarthyism, Southern segregationists, and the inertia of the Eisenhower administration into political cartoons, cartoon strips, and drawings fell to Herbert Block, Walt Kelly, and Robert Osborn, the focus of this chapter. At a time when satiric cartooning was in retreat, Mauldin, Block, Kelly, and Osborn kept the tradition of angry graphic commentary alive.
