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This section will address the characteristics of the following modes of writing: satire, parody, allegory, pastoral, narrative, comedy, tragedy, farce, and various poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets, lyrics, epics, and odes.
Satire is a literary method that mixes a critical attitude with humor, wit, or ridicule for the purpose of correcting human behavior or improving a situation. It differs from comedy in that the sole purpose of comedy is to make people laugh.
Satire existed during ancient Greece and has been used by writers ever since. During the eighteenth century, authors such as Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, and John Dryden included satire regularly in their writings. Used in virtually every genre, satire is still found today in movies, advertising, and political cartoons.
Parody is a mode of writing that shares characteristics with satire. A writer of parody imitates and makes fun of another, usually more serious, piece of work. Parody can have two purposes: comedy and criticism.
When a parody is intended for comic relief, the artist will exaggerate or distort the work’s content and style. Cervantes’ Don Quixote parodies the chivalric romances that were popular during the 1600s.
When parody is used as criticism, the author mimics the work being parodied and borrows words and phrases from it. This type of parody may still be humorous, but it has an underlying element of criticism. The success of this type of parody relies on a literate audience familiar with the original work and appreciative of the comical commentary.
An allegory is a story in which the characters, objects, and actions have another meaning. Both poets and prose writers use allegories to explain beliefs about good and evil or to address moral or religious principles. Another characteristic of an allegory is that the characters actually become what they stand for.
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, written during the seventeenth century, is a classic allegory about Christian salvation. The main character, Christian, is warned by Evangelist to leave the City of Destruction and head for the Celestial City. On the way, Christian meets characters named Faithful, Hopeful, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, and Mr. Cruelty. Bunyan’s book, which is written in the form of a dream, is strictly allegorical, but other works may have allegorical tendencies.
The following works are either written entirely as allegories or have episodic allegories.
Comedies are dramatic works that are light and humorous with happy endings. A comedy that is based on a humorous situation is called a farce. The distinction between the two is sometimes unclear. The same play may be viewed by one person as a farce and another as a comedy.
Shakespeare’s comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It, while The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy with farcical elements.
Although differentiating between a comedy and a farce may not be easy, the identifying characteristics of a tragedy are readily apparent. In drama, a tragedy is a serious play that involves the downfall of a hero or heroine.
Beowulf, Shakespeare’s tragedies, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman share common characteristics despite their many differences.
Pastorals, Lyrics, Sonnets, and Odes
A pastoral is a literary work that depicts the simple pleasures of rustic life. Pastorals exaggerate the peace and simplicity of rural life and the shepherds who live in such a setting.
Christopher Marlowe wrote “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” which is an invitation to live the idyllic pastoral life of country shepherds. The following is an excerpt from the poem.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
Besides being an example of pastoral poetry, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” is also a lyric poem. The word lyric derives from the word lyre, an ancient Greek musical instrument.
The sonnet, a well-known verse form, is believed to have been created around 1200 A.D. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto, which means “a little sound or song.”
The form was rediscovered in the fourteenth century, and Italian poet Petrarch established the conventions of what is now known as the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. English poets made modifications to the Italian sonnet, which resulted in the English or Shakespearean sonnet, since Shakespeare was the master of the form.
Another form that lyric poems can take is the ode. The word ode comes from the Greek word aeidein which means “to sing,” since the form was originally set to music. Odes have the following characteristics.
John Keats composed many well-known odes full of imagery and emotion, as the following passage from “Ode to a Nightingale” shows.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness —
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
A narrative tells a story, usually in chronological order, and can take many forms including short stories, novels, narrative poems, and narrative essays.
Narrative poetry may take the form of a ballad or an epic.
Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” is an example of a ballad. The first two stanzas follow:
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at that—
We’d put up even money now with Casey at the bat.
Study the points below for information regarding the epic.
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Dante’s Divine Comedy are legendary examples of epic poetry.
Which drama would you choose as an example of tragedy?