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Juvenalian satire
literature
Juvenalian satire, in literature, any bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary persons and institutions that is filled with personal invective, angry moral indignation, and pessimism. The name alludes to the Latin satirist Juvenal, who, in the 1st century ad, brilliantly denounced Roman society, the rich and powerful, and the discomforts and dangers of city life. Samuel Johnson modeled his poem London on Juvenal’s third satire and The Vanity of Human Wishes on the 10th. Gulliver’s Travels (1726) established Jonathan Swift as the master of Juvenalian satire. In the 20th century, Karl Kraus’s indictments of the prevailing corruption in post-World War I Austria were in the Juvenalian tradition.
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