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16 - Satire and the Essay

from Part II - The Great Age of the British Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

By
John Strachan
Edited by
Denise Gigante  and
Jason Childs
Denise Gigante
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

This chapter examines the irony, complexity, and pleasure in rhetorical ingenuity evident in the satirical essay in English, taking as its central exemplars some of the key historical figures in that tradition in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from the Irish authors Jonathan Swift and Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth through to the Romantic essayists Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, and Thomas Love Peacock. It demonstrates how the prose essay became a powerful satirical form in the Georgian period, and discusses the tonal richness and ambiguity which render the satirical essay a key subgenre in the tradition of the prose essay in English. It pays particular attention to the links between satire, colonialism, the Gothic, and the sublime in the form of the essay.

Keywords

satirecolonialismJonathan SwiftGothicsublimecomedymurderscepticismCharles LambThomas De Quincey
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 231 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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