What Is Satire?

Streaming video - 2015

Students review traditional targets for satire--pompous, domineering and hypocritical people; social, political and religious institutions--and traditional uses of satire--to amuse, criticize or persuade with varying degrees of subtlety. In this program, songs, essays, poems and works of fiction drawn from many periods illuminate the origins, development and results of this genre. Satirists such as Swift, Shaw, Woody Allen, and Dorothy Parker are presented.