On Satire
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
'A Far Cry from Kensington' by Muriel Spark
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of their series, Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing w...
'A Handful of Dust' by Evelyn Waugh
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1946 Evelyn Waugh declared that 20th-century society – ‘the century of the common man’, as he put it – was so degenerate that satire was no...
'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the end of 1895 Oscar Wilde’s life was in ruins as he sat in Reading Gaol facing public disgrace, bankruptcy and, two years later, exile. Just te...
Byron's 'Don Juan'
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Few poets have had the courage (or inclination) to rhyme ‘Plato’ with ‘potato’, ‘intellectual’ with ‘hen-peck’d you all’ or ‘Acrop...
Jane Austen's 'Emma'
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of satirist was Jane Austen? Her earliest writings follow firmly in the footsteps of Tristram Shandy in their deployment of heightened sen...
'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
'Tristram Shandy' was such a hit in its day that you could buy tea trays, watch cases and cushions decorated with its most famous characters and scene...
'The Dunciad' by Alexander Pope
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody hated better than Alexander Pope. Despite his reputation as the quintessentially refined versifier of the early 18th century, he was also a cla...
John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera'
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 'The Beggar’s Opera' we enter a society turned upside down, where private vices are seen as public virtues, and the best way to survive is to ass...
The Earl of Rochester
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
According to one contemporary, the Earl of Rochester was a man who, in life as well is in poetry, ‘could not speak with any warmth, without repeated...
Ben Jonson's 'Volpone'
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What did English satirists do after the archbishop of Canterbury banned the printing of satires in June 1599? They turned to the stage. Within months ...
John Donne's Satires
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their second episode, Colin and Clare look at the dense, digressive and often dangerous satires of John Donne and other poets of the 1590s. It’s ...
Erasmus's 'Praise of Folly'
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Clare and Colin begin their twelve-part series on satire with the big question: what is satire? Where did it come from? Is it a genre, or more of a st...
Introducing On Satire
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell present their series, On Satire. Over twelve episodes, Colin and Clare will attempt to chart a stable course through s...