Augustan Verse Satire

Augustan verse satire is the satire written in verse in the Augustan Age (the age of Alexander Pope) .
It includes well-known works like The Rape of the Lock The Dunciad, Mac Flecknoe, Absalom and
Achitophel.

Augustan age was the reign of the Emperor Augustus (27 BC- 14AD) during whose time many
distinguished writers flourished, notably -

 Virgil,
 Horace ,
 Ovid and
 Tibullus.

The term has been applied to that period of English history in which

 Dryden,
 Pope,
 Addison,
 Swift,
 Goldsmith,
 Steele

and, to some extent, Johnson lived and imitated their style, that is the final decades of the 17th c.
and the first half of the 18th c. So the phrase suggests a period of urbane and classical elegance in
writing, a time of

 harmony,
 decorum and
 proportion.

Goldsmith contributed an essay to The Bee on 'the Augustan Age in England', but he confined it to
the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14).In French literature the term is applied to the age of

 Corneille,
 Racine and
 Moliere.
In literary theory and practice most writers of this period were traditionalist, and they had a great
respect for the Classical authors, and especially the Romans, who, they believed, had established
and perfected the principal literary genres for all time. Literature was regarded as an art, in which
excellence could be attained only by prolonged study. Thus the writers of the period were
painstaking craftsmen who had a deep respect for the rules of their art. These rules could best be
learnt from close study of the Classical authors (Horace was a favourite) and by careful imitation of
their works.

Satire can be described as the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it
ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. It differs
from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire derides; that
is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt that exists outside the work itself. Satire has
usually been justified, by those who practice it, as a corrective of human vice and folly.

In discussing such writings the following distinctions are useful:

1. Critics make a broad division between formal (or “direct”) satire and indirect satire. In formal
satire the satiric persona speaks out in the first person. This “I” may address either the
reader (as in Pope’s Moral Essays, 1731–35), or else a character within the work itself, who is
called the adversarius and whose major artistic function is to elicit and add credibility to the
satiric speaker’s comments.

Two types of formal satire are commonly distinguished, taking their names from the great Roman
satirists Horace and Juvenal. The types are defined by the character of the persona whom the author
presents as the first-person satiric speaker, and also by the attitude and tone that such a persona
manifests toward both the subject matter and the readers of the work.

In Horatian satire the speaker is an urbane, witty, and tolerant man of the world, who is moved
more to wry amusement than to indignation at the spectacle of human folly, and hypocrisy, and who
uses a relaxed and informal language to evoke from readers a wry smile at human failings and
absurdities—sometimes including his own. Horace himself described his aim as “to laugh people out
of their vices and follies.” Pope’s Moral Essays and other formal satires for the most part sustain an
Horatian stance.

In Juvenalian satire the speaker is a serious moralist who uses a dignified and public utterance to
decry modes of vice and error which are no less dangerous because they are ridiculous, and who
undertakes to evoke from readers contempt, moral indignation, or an unillusioned sadness at the
aberrations of humanity. Samuel Johnson’s “London” (1738) and “The Vanity of Human Wishes”
(1749) are distinguished instances of Juvenalian satire.

2. Indirect satire is cast in some other literary form than that of direct address to the reader.
The most common indirect form is that of a fictional narrative, in which the objects of the
satire are characters who make themselves and their opinions ridiculous or obnoxious by
what they think, say, and do, and are sometimes made even more ridiculous by the author’s
comments and narrative style.