UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO

RIO PIEDRAS CAMPUS

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM

E N G L I S H 4 0 1 9

S A T I R E

P r o f e s s o r F r a n c e s M . B o t h w e l l d e l T o r o

F a l l 2 0 1 0

M o n d a y s a n d W e d n e s d a y s , 1 : 0 0 - 2 : 2 0 P M

Credits: 3 credits/ 3 hours per week/45 hours per semester

CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION: A study of satire, its history, conventions, strategies, and the

various genres in which it appears. Reading and analysis of works from antiquity, always

emphasizing English-language satire ranging from the medieval period to modern and

contemporary satirists.

JUSTIFICATION: Satire is a rich subject for study and frequently it is misunderstood because

of the unfamiliarity with its history, conventions and strategies. Spanish-speakers, whose own

rhetorical background differs substantially from that of English-speakers, often have trouble

reading and understanding satire and irony. The course would provide a survey of the weapons

in the satirist's armory, and a wide spectrum of readings from classical times to the present.

Thus the course will provide a basis for enjoying current satire as well as the great literary works

written in this mode.

OBJECTIVES: This course will provide students with the intellectual tools to understand,

analyze, and fully enjoy satire in all its myriad forms and contexts.

By the end of the course, the student will have:

1. Learn the technical language of satire,

the conventions upon which it is based,

the types that have developed from Greek

and Roman models, and its place in the

study of literature.

2. Acquired an overview of the history of

satire from the Greeks to the present,

emphasizing the development of English

language satire beginning with the

medieval period.

3. Read and analyzed great works of satire,

both in poetry and prose.

4. Learned how satire is joined to other

literary forms and rhetorical modes and

can appear as a secondary feature of

other types of literature.

5. Understand how historical, social and cultural factors affect the satirist´s

perception of reality.

6. Learned how the visual and other arts (theater, film, television, newspaper

writing, cartoons, painting, caricature, comics, etc.) incorporate satire.

7. Acquired the analytical and critical skills necessary to the appreciation and

understanding of satire,.

8. Know the basic research tools, including electronic sources, for delving more

deeply into the subject and be able to use them.

9. Conduct research into and write critical essays on the works, writers and

background of the subject of the course.

10. Develop an appreciation and understanding of irony and satire and become an

informed reader of them.

COURSE OUTLINE:

The syllabus is divided into these major areas. This a guide, not an absolute schedule.

FIRST TWO WEEKS: The basic concepts of satire, its, place in literature, the different

The Wife of Bath, Chaucer

rhetorical devices used in satire, the ways of

analyzing these. Consideration of burlesque,

parody, irony, and other related forms. Stress

on the different genres used by the satirists. (6 hours)

ONE WEEK: Historical survey of satire,

devoting roughly one week to classical satire

(Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal, Petronius,

etc.). Lysistrata. (3 hours)

THREE WEEKS: medieval through early

seventeenth-century works (Chaucer,

Shakespeare, Jonson, etc.) (9 hours )

FOUR WEEKS: three weeks to the height of

English satire in the late seventeenth and the

eighteenth century (Dryden, Wycherley, Swift,

Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Hogarth, Smollett,

Hogarth, Sheridan, etc.). Four English

Comedies. Gulliver's Travels. English Poetic

Satire. (12 hours )

TWO WEEKS: Devoted to satire of the

nineteenth century,(Byron, Dickens, Carlyle,

Wilde, Butler, Twain, etc.),

THREE WEEKS: modern and contemporary

satire (Orwell, Waugh, Huxley, Amis, Heller,

Wolfe, Brautigan, Pfeiffer, Allen, Buchwald,

Baker, Reed, Naipul, Vonnegut, National

Lampoon, New Yorker, Doonesbury, Bloom

County, etc. including films, art, cartoons,

and other media). Hard Times. Brave New

World. Cat's Cradle. Plays: One.

Texts (may vary):

A CD of texts from the internet will provide

essential early readings, including Aristophanes,

Horace, Juvenal, Chaucer, Swift, Pope, Byron,

among others.

For the modern satire the following books are

suggested:

Satiric cartoon of Alexander Pope

Four English Comedies, ed. by J.M. Morell. Penguin.

Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

This list will be supplemented with handouts, videos, audios, etc.

GRADES: A-F

EVALUATION: Relative weight of grades will be: 4 essays, 15% each; class participation

(15%) and oral report, 15%; attendance (5%)

Los estudiantes que reciben servicios de Rehabilitación Vocacional deben comunicarse con el

profesor al inicio del semestre para planificar el acomodo razonable y equipo asistivo necesario

conforme a las recomedaciones de la Oficina de Asuntos Estudiantes. También aquellos

estudiantes con necesidades especiales que requieren de algún tipo de asistencia o acomodo

deben comunicarse con el

profesor. Ley 51

Evaluación diferenciada a

estudiantes con

necesidades especiales.

Ley 51.

Teaching Strategies

Lecture (40%)

and Discussion (40%),

Student reports and

activities (20%)

Course requirements:

1. Students will be expected to attend classes regularly, Class attendance and participation

count as an exam grade. Each day a list will be circulated for you to sign. Make certain

that you do, even if you are late. NOCELL PHONES OR OTHER NOISE'MAKING

ELECTRONICS IN THE CLASS. Please switch them off when you come into the

classroom.

Satiric cartoon of fashion for ladies’ hats

2. One final exam will be given, which will be administered on the day of the final. It will

be primarily made up of essay questions.

3. Students will write three short papers (3-5 pages long) on a choice of topics to be

assigned. These papers will not be primarily research papers, but essays in which

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evelop their own ideas and interpretations. You are, however, expected to annotate

properly any sources you do use. Plagiarism means an automatic Fgrade. Annotation

style should be MLA (Modern Language Association). TheMLA Handbook can be found

in the Richardson Seminar Room, or you can buy a copy of your own. If you are an

English major, the latter is strongly recommended.

4. Students will give an oral report (15 - 20 minutes or so) on a topic from a list which I will

circulate soon. Other short assignments may be given as well.

5. Students will be expected to keep up with the readings, look up words and terms they

don't understand, use dictionaries, and generally appear to be alert, intelligent human

beings. Should I find that I am alone in having read a text, a reading quiz will be given as

a corrective for your negligence. You don't like answering reading quizzes, I hate making

them up and correcting them. Let's avoid the whole thing by keeping up with the

readings.

6. Students should bring to class some sheets of "theme" or binder paper (8 ½ by 11").

7. I will show several videos and expect everyone to attend those sessions like a regular

class. If you miss a video, you must make it up by watching it at home.

Final exam: On the day assigned

by the Registrar in the official

calendar. All assignments and

papers must be in by that date or

earlier.

GRADES: Relative weight of

grades will be: 3 essays, 20%

each; class participation and oral

report, 20%; final exam, 20%.

Office Hours

My name is Dr. Frances M.

Bothwell del Toro, known as

Prof. Bothwell. My office is in

Pedreira 2A. My office hours this

semester will be on Mondays and

Wednesdays from 4:00 to 5:15

PM and Saturdays from noon to 2 PM or by appointment. . If you cannot come during my

office hours and need to see me, please make an appointment.

My email is fmbothwell@gmail.com. I try to answer emails within two days of receiving it. But

if I don´t, you should send a second copy.

A number of Reserve books, articles and works will be placed, as needed, in the Richardson

Seminar Room, but users of the online site will have other sources (which I cannot duplicate) for

their use as well (if it works). Blackboard has become unstable recently, so I will try to find an

alternative to it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Augustan Satire: An Annotated Bibliography. Jack Lynch.

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Biblio/satirebib.html

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Irony.Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Branhan, R. Bracht. Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditons. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Carretta, Vincent. The Snarling Muse: Verbal and Visual Political Satire from Pope to

Churchill. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.

Chambers, A. B. (Alexander B.). Andrew Marvell and Edmund Waller : Seventeenth-century

Praise and Restoration Satire. University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press,

c1991.

A Companion to Satire : Ancient and Modern. Edited by Ruben Quintero. Malden, MA :

Blackwell Pub., 2007.

Cutting Edges : Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-century Satire. Edited by James E.

Gill. Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, c1995.

De Smet, I. A. R. “Menippean Satire Reconsidered. The Modern Language Review 102 no. pt4

(October 2007) 1123-1125

http://biblioteca.uprrp.edu:2090/hww/results/getResults.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/sForm.jht

ml

Dorothy, George M. Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire. London: Viking

Penguin Books, 1967, rpt. 1987.

Elliot, Robet C. The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art. Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1960.

Farley-Hills, David. The Benevolence of Laughter : Comic Poetry of the Commonwealth and

Restoration. London : Macmillan, 1974.

Feinberg, Leonard,: Introduction to Satire; with a new introduction by Don L. Nilsen. Santa Fe,

N.M. : Pilgrims Process, 2008.

Freedman, Leonard.: the Offensive Art : Political Satire and its Censorship Around the World

from Beerbohm to Borat.. Westport, Conn. : Praeger Publishers, 2008.

Flynn, Carol Houlihan. The Body in Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Frye, Northrup. The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.

George, M. Dorothy. Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire.

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Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. Three Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

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Guilhamet, Leon. Satire and the Transformation of Genre. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1987.

Hemingway, S. “Caricature and the Grotesque in Hellenistic Sculpture”. Sculpture

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http://biblioteca.uprrp.edu:2090/hww/results/getResults.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/re

sults/sForm.jhtml

Highet, Gilbert. The Anatomy of Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.

Hodgart, Matthew. Satire. New York: World University Library, 1969.

In/fidelity : Essays on Film Adaptation . Edited by David L. Kranz and Nancy C.

Mellerski. Newcastle, UK : Cambridge Scholars Pub., 2008.

Jack, Ian Robert James. Augustan Satire: Intention and Idiom in English Poetry 1660-

1750. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1966.

Kernan, Alvin, ed. Modern Satire. New York, 1962.

Kingsley, James and James T. boulton, eds. English Satiric Poetry, Dryden to Byron.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970.

Knox, Norman. The Word Irony and Its Context, 1500-1755. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ.

Press, 1961.

Kropf, C.R. "Libel and Satire in the Eighteenth-Century." Die Englische Satire. Ed. Wolfgang

Weiss. Darmstadt: wissenschaftliche Buchges, 1982. 334-351, ix.

Kupersmith, William. Roman Satirists of Seventeenth-Century England. Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1985.

Leybrun, Ellen Douglass. Satiric Allegory: Mirror of Man. 1956.

Lund, Roger D. “The Eel of Science: Index Learning, Scriblerian Satire, and the Rise of

Information Culture.” Eighteenth-Century Life 22.2 (1998): 18-42.

McFarlane, Cameron. The Sodomite in Fiction and Satire, 1660-1750 . New York,

Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Milburn, Daniel Judson. The age of wit, 1650-1750. New York : Macmillan, [1966]

Mowry, Melissa M. The Bawdy Politic in Stuart England, 1660-1714 : Political Pornography

and Prostitution. Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate Pub., 2004.

Neglia, Erminio G. the Eternal Prank : Myth, Satire and Drama.: 2nd ed. Prospect, CT :

Biographical Pub. Co., 2008.

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Martin's Press, 1987.

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___. Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England. 1967.

Peterson, Russell Leslie. Strange Bedfellows : How Late-night Comedy Turns Democracy into a

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Pollack, Ellen . The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift and

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