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Charles Churchill
Charles Churchill , 1731-64, English poet and satirist. Upon his family's insistence he took religious orders in 1756, but life as a London dandy suited him more, and he resigned his curacy. His first poem and perhaps his best work, The Rosciad (1761), a satire on the leading actresses and actors ...
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satire
satire term applied to any work of literature or art whose objective is ridicule. It is more easily recognized than defined. From ancient times satirists have shared a common aim: to expose foolishness in all its guises—vanity, hypocrisy, pedantry, idolatry, bigotry, sentimentality—and ...
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Joseph Hall
Joseph Hall 1574-1656, English prelate and author. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and became bishop of Exeter, 1627-41, and of Norwich, 1641-47. The rise of Puritanism involved him in serious church difficulties, and his vigorous defense of the episcopacy against its attackers resu...
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caricature
caricature a satirical drawing, plastic representation, or description which, through exaggeration of natural features, makes its subject appear ridiculous. Although 16th-century Northern painters, such as Holbein, Bruegel, and Bosch, employed certain elements of caricature, no comic tradition was ...
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Epicharmus
Epicharmus , c.550-c.460 BC, Sicilian Greek comic dramatist. He was the first to write a coherent artistic comedy, and he dealt with forms other than personal satire such as mythological burlesque.
Bibliography: See A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy (1927, repr. 1962).
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Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux , 1636-1711, French literary critic and poet. He was the spokesman of classicism , drawing his principles from his contemporaries, among them his friends Racine, Molière, and La Fontaine. His critical precepts are embodied in L'Art poétique (1674), a...
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Christian Dietrich Grabbe
Christian Dietrich Grabbe , 1801-36, German dramatist and journalist. Critical of "Shakespearomania," Grabbe strove for a national German drama and wrote original, poetic historical tragedies. Hannibal (1835) and Hermannsschlacht [Hermann's battle] (1838) depict the genial individual shatter...
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Aristophanes
Aristophanes , c.448 BC-c.388 BC, Greek playwright, Athenian comic poet, greatest of the ancient writers of comedy . His plays, the only full extant samples of the Greek Old Comedy, mix political, social, and literary satire. The direct attack on persons, the severity of invective, and the burlesqu...
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Juvenal
Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) , fl. 1st to 2d cent. AD, Roman satirical poet. His verse established a model for the satire of indignation, in contrast to the less harsh satire of ridicule of Horace. Little is known about his life except that during much of it he was desperately poor. A tradit...
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René Clair
René Clair , 1898-1981, French film director, writer, and producer. Beginning as a film critic, Clair first received international attention in the 1930s with his early sound films, notable for their satirical content and lovely photographic treatment. His Under the Roofs of Paris (1929) he...
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