satire
satire (satura)was first classified as a literary form in Rome. ‘Satire, at any rate, is all our own,’ boasted Quintilian (10. 1. 93) of the genre that depicted Rome in the least flattering light. Originally simply a hotch-potch (in verse, or in prose and verse mixed), satire soon acquired its specific character as a humorous or malicious exposé of hypocrisy and pretension; however, it continued to be a hold-all for mismatched subjects, written in an uneven style and overlapping with other genres. The author himself figured prominently in a variety of shifting roles: civic watchdog, sneering cynic, mocking or indignant observer, and social outcast.
Name
Satura is the feminine of satur, ‘full’, and was transferred to literary miscellanies from lanx satura, a dish crammed with first fruits, or from satura, a mixed stuffing or sausage. Juvenal, for example, claims (1. 86) to be filling his writing...[The entire page is 1709 words long]
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