Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude, critically shaped by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War; the Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as a satirical tale against Stalin, in his essay "Why I Write", wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole"; the original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but U. S. publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, only one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime kept it.
Other titular variations include subtitles like "A Satire" and "A Contemporary Satire". Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for "bear", a symbol of Russia, it played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques. Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the UK was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany and the British people and intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated; the manuscript was rejected by a number of British and American publishers, including one of Orwell's own, Victor Gollancz, which delayed its publication. It became a great commercial success when it did appear because international relations were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War. Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels, it won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.
Old Major, the old boar on the Manor Farm, summons the animals on the farm together for a meeting, during which he refers to humans as "enemies" and teaches the animals a revolutionary song called "Beasts of England". When Major dies, two young pigs and Napoleon, assume command and consider it a duty to prepare for the Rebellion; the animals revolt, driving the drunken, irresponsible farmer Mr. Jones, as well as Mrs. Jones and the other human caretakers and employees, off the farm, renaming it "Animal Farm", they adopt the Seven Commandments of Animalism, the most important of which is, "All animals are equal". The decree is painted in large letters on one side of the barn. Snowball teaches the animals to read and write, while Napoleon educates young puppies on the principles of Animalism. Food is plentiful, the farm runs smoothly; the pigs elevate themselves to positions of leadership and set aside special food items, ostensibly for their personal health. Some time several men attack Animal Farm.
Jones and his men are making an attempt to recapture the farm, aided by several other farmers who are terrified of similar animal revolts. Snowball and the animals, who are hiding in ambush, defeat the men by launching a surprise attack as soon as they enter the farmyard. Snowball's popularity soars, this event is proclaimed "The Battle of the Cowshed", it is celebrated annually on the anniversary of the Rebellion. Napoleon and Snowball vie for pre-eminence; when Snowball announces his plans to modernize the farm by building a windmill, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball away and declares himself leader. Napoleon enacts changes to the governance structure of the farm, replacing meetings with a committee of pigs who will run the farm. Through a young pig named Squealer, Napoleon claims credit for the windmill idea; the animals work harder with the promise of easier lives with the windmill. When the animals find the windmill collapsed after a violent storm and Squealer convince the animals that Snowball is trying to sabotage their project.
Once Snowball becomes a scapegoat, Napoleon begins to purge the farm with his dogs, killing animals he accuses of consorting with his old rival. When some animals recall the Battle of the Cowshed, Napoleon smears Snowball as a collaborator of Farmer Jones', while falsely representing himself as the hero of the battle. "Beasts of England" is replaced with an anthem glorifying Napoleon, who appears to be adopting the lifestyle of a man. The animals remain convinced. Mr Frederick, a neighbouring farmer, attacks the farm, using blasting powder to blow up the restored windmill. Although the animals win the battle, they do so at great cost, as many, including Boxer, the workhorse, are wounded. Despite his injuries, Boxer continues working harder and harder, until he collapses while working on the windmill. Napoleon sends for a van to purportedly take Boxer to a veterinary surgeon, explaining that better care can be given there. Benjamin, the cynical donkey who "could read as well as any pig", notices that the van belongs to a knacker and attempts a futile rescue.
Squealer assures the animals that the van had been purchased from the knacker by an animal hospital, that the previous owner's signboard had not been repainted. In a subsequent report, Squealer reports sadly to the animals that Boxer died peacefully at the animal hospital; the pigs hold a festival one day after Boxer's death to further praise
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. Poetry has a long history, dating back to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry in Africa, panegyric and elegiac court poetry was developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile and Volta river valleys; some of the earliest written poetry in Africa can be found among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE, while the Epic of Sundiata is one of the most well-known examples of griot court poetry. The earliest Western Asian epic poetry, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama and comedy.
Attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects; the use of ambiguity, symbolism and other stylistic elements of poetic diction leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Figures of speech such as metaphor and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm; some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe and Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter.
Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, the principle of euphony itself, sometimes altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. In today's globalized world, poets adapt forms and techniques from diverse cultures and languages; some scholars believe. Others, suggest that poetry did not predate writing; the oldest surviving epic poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer, was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and on papyrus. A tablet dating to c. 2000 BCE describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe. Other ancient epic poetry includes the Iliad and the Odyssey. Epic poetry, including the Odyssey, the Gathas, the Indian Vedas, appears to have been composed in poetic form as an aid to memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies.
Other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the Shijing, were lyrics; the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in "poetics"—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as China's through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More thinkers have struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi, as well as differences in content spanning Tanakh religious poetry, love poetry, rap. Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle's Poetics describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the underlying purposes of the genre.
Aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry, dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry. Aristotle's work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. Poets and aestheticians distinguished poetry from, defined it in opposition to prose, understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure; this does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic "Negative Capability"; this "romantic" approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into t
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist and critic, whose work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry and polemical journalism, he is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier, documenting his experience of working class life in the north of England, Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, are acclaimed, as are his essays on politics, literature and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture and the term "Orwellian"—descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices—has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Hate week", "Room 101", "memory hole", "newspeak", "doublethink", "proles", "unperson" and "thoughtcrime".
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, British India. His great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the Earl of Westmorland, had income as an absentee landlord of plantations in Jamaica, his grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman. Although the gentility passed down the generations, the prosperity did not, his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair, grew up in Moulmein, where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older; when Eric was one year old, his mother his sisters to England. His birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari has been declared a protected monument of historical importance. In 1904 Ida Blair settled with her children at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, the family did not see their husband or father, Richard Blair, until 1912.
His mother's diary from 1905 describes a lively round of artistic interests. Before the First World War, the family moved to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family their daughter Jacintha; when they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. On being asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, dreamed of becoming famous writers. He said. During this period, he enjoyed shooting and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister. Aged five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames, which Marjorie attended, it was a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursuline nuns, exiled from France after religious education was banned in 1903. His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family could not afford the fees, he needed to earn a scholarship. Ida Blair's brother Charles Limouzin recommended St Cyprian's School, East Sussex.
Limouzin, a proficient golfer, knew of the school and its headmaster through the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club, where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win a scholarship, made a private financial arrangement that allowed Blair's parents to pay only half the normal fees. In September 1911, Eric arrived at St Cyprian's, he boarded at the school for the next five years. During this period, while working for the Ministry of Pensions, his mother lived at 23 Cromwell Crescent, Earls Court, he knew nothing of the reduced fees, although he "soon recognised that he was from a poorer home". Blair hated the school and many years wrote an essay "Such, Such Were the Joys", published posthumously, based on his time there. At St Cyprian's, Blair first met Cyril Connolly. Many years as the editor of Horizon, Connolly published several of Orwell's essays. While at St Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard.
He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, none was available for Blair, he chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916. In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington. In May 1917 a place became available as a King's Scholar at Eton. At this time the family lived at Notting Hill Gate. Blair remained at Eton until December 1921, when he left midway between his 19th birthday. Wellington was "beastly", Orwell told his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton, his principal tutor was A. S. F. Gow, Fellow of Trinity College, who gave him advice in his career. Blair was taught French by Aldous Huxley. Steven Runciman, at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair. Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years
Realism (arts)
Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, or implausible and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, can be in large part a matter of technique and training, the avoidance of stylization. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction of lifeforms and the details of light and colour, but realist or naturalist works of art may, as well or instead of illusionist realism, be "realist" in their subject-matter, emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid. This is typical of the 19th-century Realist movement that began in France in the 1850s, after the 1848 Revolution, social realism, regionalism, or kitchen sink realism; the Realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. There have been various movements invoking realism in the other arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism, Italian neorealist cinema.
Realism is the precise and accurate representation in art of the visual appearance of scenes and objects i.e. it is drawn in photographic precision. Realism in this sense is called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism. Realistic art was created in many periods, it is in large part a matter of technique and training, the avoidance of stylization, it becomes marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and other artists in the 15th century. However such "realism" is used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had seen in real life. 19th-century Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet are by no means noted for precise and careful depiction of visual appearances. It is the choice and treatment of subject matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting, rather than the careful attention to visual appearances. Other terms such as naturalism, naturalistic and "veristic" do not escape the same ambiguity, though the distinction between "realistic" and "realist" is useful, as is the term "illusionistic" for the accurate rendering of visual appearances.
The development of accurate representation of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance, of detailed effects of light and colour; the Art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals, Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization that allowed effective depictions to be produced widely and consistently. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy, has remained an influential model since. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts, the surviving corpus of derivative works it is clear that illusionism was valued in painting. Pliny the Elder's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, but indicates the aspiration of Greek painting.
As well as accuracy in shape and colour, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones, representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism. Roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects; the art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of the elite. In the West classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods, were helped, first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, around the 1470s in Italy, by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using small brushes and several layers of paint and glaze.
Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in the early 15th century and spread across Europe, accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm; the accurate depiction of landscape in painting had been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting, was brought to a high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting, with subtle techniques for depicting a range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, by 1600 European portraiture could give a good likeness in both painting and sculpture, though the subjects were idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings, still life elements in other w
The Decameron
The Decameron, subtitled "Prince Galehaut", is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio. The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, afflicting the city. Boccaccio conceived of The Decameron after the epidemic of 1348, completed it by 1353; the various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, life lessons contribute to the mosaic. In addition to its literary value and widespread influence, it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of classical early Italian prose; the book's primary title exemplifies Boccaccio's fondness for Greek philology: Decameron combines two Greek words, δέκα, déka and ἡμέρα, hēméra, to form a term that means "ten-day ". Ten days is the period.
Boccaccio's subtitle, Prencipe Galeotto, refers to Galehaut, a fictional king portrayed in the Lancelot-Grail, sometimes called by the title haut prince. Galehaut was an enemy of King Arthur; when Galehaut learned that Lancelot loved Arthur's wife, Guinevere, he set aside his own ardor for Lancelot in order to arrange a meeting between his friend and Guinevere. At this meeting the Queen first kisses Lancelot, so begins their love affair. In Canto V of Inferno, Dante compares these fictional lovers with the real-life paramours Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, whose relationship he fictionalises. In Inferno and Paolo read of Lancelot and Guinevere, the story impassions them to lovemaking. Dante's description of Galehaut's munificence and savoir-faire amidst this intrigue impressed Boccaccio. By invoking the name Prencipe Galeotto in the alternative title to Decameron, Boccaccio alludes to a sentiment he expresses in the text: his compassion for women deprived of free speech and social liberty, confined to their homes and, at times, lovesick.
He contrasts this life with that of the menfolk, who enjoy respite in sport, such as hunting, fishing and falconry. In Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young women and three young men flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in the countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the evenings, every member of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores, the holy days during which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of the fortnight they have told 100 stories; each of the ten characters is charged as King or Queen of the company for one of the ten days in turn. This charge extends to choosing the theme of the stories for that day, all but two days have topics assigned: examples of the power of fortune. Only Dioneo, who tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit. Many authors have argued; each day includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue the frame of the tales by describing other daily activities besides story-telling.
These frame tale interludes include transcriptions of Italian folk songs. The interactions among tales in a day, or across days, as Boccaccio spins variations and reversals of previous material, forms a whole and not just a collection of stories; the basic plots of the stories include mocking the greed of the clergy. Throughout the Decameron the mercantile ethic predominates; the commercial and urban values of quick wit and intelligence are treasured, while the vices of stupidity and dullness are cured, or punished. While these traits and values may seem obvious to the modern reader, they were an emerging feature in Europe with the rise of urban centers and a monetized economic system beyond the traditional rural feudal and monastery systems which placed greater value on piety and loyalty. Beyond the unity provided by the frame narrative, the Decameron provides a unity in philosophical outlook. Throughout runs the common medieval theme of Lady Fortune, how one can rise and fall through the external influences of the "Wheel of Fortune".
Boccaccio had been educated in the tradition of Dante's Divine Comedy, which used various levels of allegory to show the connections between the literal events of the story and the Christian message. However, the Decameron uses Dante's model not to educate the reader but to satirize this method of learning; the Roman Catholic Church and religious belief become the satirical source of comedy throughout. This was part of a wider historical trend in the aftermath of the Black Death which saw widespread discontent with the church. Many details of the Decameron are infused with a medieval sense of numerological and mystical significance. For example, it is believed that the seven young women are m
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, mime, etc, performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory; the term "drama" comes from a Greek word meaning "action", derived from "I do". The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. In English, the word "play" or "game" was the standard term used to describe drama until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a "play-maker" rather than a "dramatist" and the building was a "play-house" rather than a "theatre"; the use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play, neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin or Chekhov's Ivanov. It is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe "drama" as a genre within their respective media.
"Radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance, it has been used to describe the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception; the structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. Mime is a form of drama. Drama can be combined with music: the dramatic text in opera is sung throughout. Musicals include songs. Closet drama describes a form, intended to be read, rather than performed. In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance. Western drama originates in classical Greece; the theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama: tragedy and the satyr play. Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BC they were institutionalised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating the god Dionysus.
Historians know the names of many ancient Greek dramatists, not least Thespis, credited with the innovation of an actor who speaks and impersonates a character, while interacting with the chorus and its leader, who were a traditional part of the performance of non-dramatic poetry. Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists, has survived to this day: we have a small number of complete texts by the tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides, the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander. Aeschylus' historical tragedy The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at the City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years; the competition for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BC. Tragic dramatists were required to present a tetralogy of plays, which consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. Comedy was recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC. Five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia.
Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between "old comedy", "middle comedy" and "new comedy". Following the expansion of the Roman Republic into several Greek territories between 270–240 BC, Rome encountered Greek drama. From the years of the republic and by means of the Roman Empire, theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England. While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BC marks the beginning of regular Roman drama. From the beginning of the empire, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments; the first important works of Roman literature were the tragedies and comedies that Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BC. Five years Gnaeus Naevius began to write drama. No plays from either writer have survived. While both dramatists composed in both genres, Andronicus was most appreciated for his tragedies and Naevius for his comedies. By the beginning of the 2nd century BC, drama was established in Rome and a guild of writers had been formed.
The Roman comedies that have survived are all fabula palliata (comedies b
Satire
Satire is a genre of literature, sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant"—but parody, exaggeration, comparison and double entendre are all used in satirical speech and writing; this "militant" irony or sarcasm professes to approve of the things the satirist wishes to attack. Satire is nowadays found in many artistic forms of expression, including internet memes, plays, television shows, media such as lyrics; the word satire comes from the subsequent phrase lanx satura. Satur meant "full" but the juxtaposition with lanx shifted the meaning to "miscellany or medley": the expression lanx satura means "a full dish of various kinds of fruits".
The word satura as used by Quintilian, was used to denote only Roman verse satire, a strict genre that imposed hexameter form, a narrower genre than what would be intended as satire. Quintilian famously said that satura, a satire in hexameter verses, was a literary genre of wholly Roman origin, he was aware of and commented on Greek satire, but at the time did not label it as such, although today the origin of satire is considered to be Aristophanes' Old Comedy. The first critic to use the term "satire" in the modern broader sense was Apuleius. To Quintilian, the satire was a strict literary form, but the term soon escaped from the original narrow definition. Robert Elliott writes: As soon as a noun enters the domain of metaphor, as one modern scholar has pointed out, it clamours for extension; the odd result is. By about the 4th century AD the writer of satires came to be known as satyricus. Subsequent orthographic modifications obscured the Latin origin of the word satire: satura becomes satyra, in England, by the 16th century, it was written'satyre.'
The word satire derives from satura, its origin was not influenced by the Greek mythological figure of the satyr. In the 17th century, philologist Isaac Casaubon was the first to dispute the etymology of satire from satyr, contrary to the belief up to that time. Laughter is not an essential component of satire. Conversely, not all humour on such topics as politics, religion or art is "satirical" when it uses the satirical tools of irony and burlesque. Light-hearted satire has a serious "after-taste": the organizers of the Ig Nobel Prize describe this as "first make people laugh, make them think". Satire and irony in some cases have been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society, the oldest form of social study, they provide the keenest insights into a group's collective psyche, reveal its deepest values and tastes, the society's structures of power. Some authors have regarded satire as superior to non-comic and non-artistic disciplines like history or anthropology. In a prominent example from ancient Greece, philosopher Plato, when asked by a friend for a book to understand Athenian society, referred him to the plays of Aristophanes.
Satire has satisfied the popular need to debunk and ridicule the leading figures in politics, economy and other prominent realms of power. Satire confronts public discourse and the collective imaginary, playing as a public opinion counterweight to power, by challenging leaders and authorities. For instance, it forces administrations to amend or establish their policies. Satire's job is to expose problems and contradictions, it's not obligated to solve them. Karl Kraus set in the history of satire a prominent example of a satirist role as confronting public discourse. For its nature and social role, satire has enjoyed in many societies a special freedom license to mock prominent individuals and institutions; the satiric impulse, its ritualized expressions, carry out the function of resolving social tension. Institutions like the ritual clowns, by giving expression to the antisocial tendencies, represent a safety valve which re-establishes equilibrium and health in the collective imaginary, which are jeopardized by the repressive aspects of society.
The state of political satire in a given society reflects the tolerance or intolerance that characterizes it, the state of civil liberties and human rights. Under totalitarian regimes any criticism of a political system, satire, is suppressed. A typical example is the Soviet Union where the dissidents, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were under strong pressure from the government. While satire of everyday life in the USSR was allowed, the most prominent satirist being Arkady Raikin, political satire existed in the form of anecdotes that made fun of Soviet political leaders Brezhnev, famous for his narrow-mindedness and love for awards and decorations. Satire is a diverse genre, complex to classif
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