satire: Quick Facts

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Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove

Satirical drawing by Max Beerbohm showing caricatures of Winston Churchill and H.G. Wells in caps and sweaters, facing each other and arguing with fists and pointed fingers.

Horace, bronze medal, 4th century; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Take a look at George Bernard Shaw speaking on the marvels of Movietone

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Topics

Horatian satire hijāʾ parody The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 Was Sci-Fi Passed Off as News Today in History—August 25: The Great Moon Hoax Takes Off burlesque mock-epic fool’s literature Menippean satire conceptismo Novel children’s literature biography folk literature Modernist literature short story epic romance Poetry oral literature

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Key People

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Yevgeny Petrov

Soviet humorist

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Ilya Ilf

Soviet humorist

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Stan Freberg

American satirist

Portrait painting of French dramatist Moliere, shown with long curly hair, a mustache, and wearing a richly detailed robe, by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse after Pierre Mignard.

Molière

French dramatist

Life-sized plaster sculpture Seated Voltaire by Jean-Antoine Houdon shows Voltaire draped in a robe, seated with a thoughtful expression and a ribbon crown, against a dark background.

Voltaire

French philosopher and author

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Anglo-Irish author and clergyman

Lord Byron

Lord Byron

British poet

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus, shown in dark robes and cap, writing with a quill at a desk, after Quinten Massijs, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Erasmus

Dutch humanist

Horace, bronze medal, 4th century; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

Horace

Roman poet

François Rabelais

François Rabelais

French author

Portrait of poet Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

English author

Henry Fielding, frontispiece to Fielding's Works (1st ed., 1762), engraving by James Basire after a drawing by William Hogarth

Henry Fielding

English author

Poet John Dryden

John Dryden

British author

Nikolay Gogol

Nikolay Gogol

Ukrainian-born writer

Portrait of German poet Heinrich Heine, circa 1827, seated with one arm resting on his knee and wearing a dark coat over a white shirt.

Heinrich Heine

German author

Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Greek dramatist

French write and Nobel laureate André Gide

André Gide

French writer

Bret Easton Ellis seated in a red chair, wearing glasses and a black suit, resting his chin on his hand and looking at the camera at a Rome Film Festival event.

Bret Easton Ellis

American author

August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Swedish dramatist

Samuel Butler, detail of an oil painting by Charles Gogin, 1896; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Samuel Butler

English author [1835-1902]