Augustan Satire

Known as the “Augustan age,” the first half of the eighteenth century saw an explosive
rise in literary production. Due to the influence of Enlightenment thought, literary works
during this period often focused on explicitly political and social themes, allowing for an
increase in the production of political writings of all genres. Among the most popular
genres were both moral works (sermons, essays, dialogues, etc.) and satire. Satire in
particular flourished in a variety of forms: prose, poetry, drama. Some of the satires
produced during this period commented on the general flaws of the human condition
while others specifically critiqued certain individuals and policies. All, however, were
transparent statements about the greater political and social environment of the
eighteenth century.

Drawing on the neoclassical impulse of the period, eighteenth-century satirists

described themselves as the heirs of the Roman poets Horace and Juvenal. Horatian
satire tends to take a gentle and more sympathetic approach towards the satiric subject,
which it identifies as folly. Augustan examples of Horatian satire include Alexander
Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1714) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). By
contrast Juvenalian satire identified the object of its satire as evil, launching a
contemptuous invective to ridicule it. Characterized by irony and sarcasm, this satiric
mode rejected humor in favor of moral outrage. Eighteenth-century examples of
Juvenalian satire include Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) and his misogynist poems
such as “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed” (1731), “The Progress of Beauty”
(1719-20), and “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (1732).
One of the most popular satiric modes during the Augustan period was the mock epic, a
literary form that creates a burlesque of the classical epic. The satirist imports the
formula characteristic of the epic—the invocation of a deity, supernatural machinery,
etc.—to discuss a trivial subject. The use of classical epic devices thereby establishes
an ironic contrast between the work’s structure and its content, exposing the triviality of
the satirical subject. The best-known mock epics in the English language are John
Dryden’s MacFlecknoe (1676), an attack on Thomas Shadwell and Pope’s The Rape of the
Lock. Pope’s The Dunciad (1728, 1742) also took mock-heroic form and drew on
Dryden’s satire on Shadwell to attack Lewis Theobald (1728) and, later, Colley Cibber
(1742).
Several like-minded Augustan satirists formed the Scriblerus Club, founded in 1712. Its
members included Jonathan Swift; Alexander Pope; John Gay; John Arbuthnot; Henry
St. John, Lord Bolingbroke; and Thomas Parnell. Their professed object was to satirize
the abuses of learning, which led to the publication of The Memoirs of Martinus
Scriblerus (1741). Both Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Pope’s The Dunciad grew out of
projects for this group.