Satire does require an idiomatic grasp of a culture. And it can last: Dryden's MacFlecknoe is still funny, as is Swift's "Modest Proposal." Some satires - The Late George Apley, for instance - that seem cutting at first are transmogrified by time into something gentler. But what enables them all to survive is that the "relevant" issue is less central to them than the universal insight into human nature that they display.
Interesting that you say that MacFlecknoe is still funny, because I've heard people argue that it shouldn't be taught to undergrads because it's so specific to its time that half of the job of reading it is reading footnotes. Personally, I read it as an undergrad and did enjoy it and find it funny. Of course, I like footnotes, so maybe I'm just weird.
ReplyDeleteHi Frank,
ReplyDeleteSeems to me one would have to be humor challenged not to find this funny:
Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years:
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray;
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
"I am glad that I managed to write The Crucible, but looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved. Now, after more than three-quarters of a century of fascination with the great snake of political and social developments, I can see more than a few occasions when we were confronted by the same sensation of having stepped into another age." Arthur Miller
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to know what you think about this statement by Arthur Miller.
An absurd comedy about the Salem witch trials, and I'm sure he meant something with a sharp edge, would no doubt have been a work of satire.
It seems to me that Arthur Miller questioned the value of Tragedy and found that it came up short. Tragedy arouses the senses, for sure, but too often the sense of outrage is left behind with the dead bodies on the stage.
And here enters the question about the morality of telling such tales. And for that we might have to reach back to Plato and Aristotle, if Arthur Miller hasn't already answered.
Let's start class with Aristotle's Poetics. But then again, we might want to cancel it. Who wants to read that stuff?
As John Barth said in the foreward to the Anchor Books Edition of Lost in the Funhouse, explaining in part why he, a novelist, wanted to write short stories: "The clown comes to want to play Hamlet, and vice versa; the long-distance runner itches to sprint." The grass is always greener and all that.
ReplyDelete