The Satiric Literature
Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originality of perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead, it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies. What they do is to look at familiar conditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful, or affected. Satire jars us out of complacence into a pleasantly shocked realization that many of the values we unquestioningly accept are false. Don Quixote derides the stupidity of knights Brave New World ridicules the pretensions of science; A Modest Proposal dramatizes starvation by advocating cannibalism. None of these ideas is original. Chivalry was suspect before Cervantes, humanists objected to the claims of pure science before Aldous Huxley, and people were aware of famine before Swift. It was not the originality of the idea that made these satires popular. It was the manner of expression, the satiric method that made them interesting and entertaining. Satires are read because they are aesthetically satisfying works of art, not because they are morally wholesome or ethically instructive. They are stimulating and refreshing because with commonsense briskness they brush away illusions and secondhand opinions. With spontaneous irreverence, satire rearranges perspectives, scrambles familiar objects into incongruous juxtaposition, and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude. Satire exists because there is need for it. It has lived because readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus, an irreverent reminder that they live in a world of platitudinous thinking, cheap moralizing, and foolish philosophy. Satire serves to prod people into an awareness of truth, though rarely to any action on behalf of truth. Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, and read in popular media is sanctimonious, sentimental, and only partially true. Life resembles in only a slight degree the popular image of it. Soldiers rarely hold the ideals that movies attribute to them, nor do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfish service of humanity. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them when they do not hear them expressed.
雅思阅读高分备考的重要内容
雅思阅读文章的结构和题型介绍
雅思阅读段落标题类7大介绍
雅思阅读文章的展开方式
解答雅思阅读题目的步骤和方法
三类最常见的雅思阅读文章题材汇总
解答雅思阅读题目需认真审题
雅思阅读答题的十个方法
雅思阅读词汇的理解方法
雅思阅读备考有五个突破口
雅思阅读常见题型解析
雅思阅读判断题答题方法:选项的关系
雅思阅读做题方法的误区介绍
雅思阅读备考手册:如何发现信号词
雅思阅读长难句分析(共6句)
雅思阅读分阶段备考计划分享
雅思阅读长难句翻译(共五例)
雅思阅读判断题答题小技巧总结
雅思阅读配对题答题策略
考前一个月如何准备雅思阅读?
雅思阅读模拟题:new weapon to fight cancer
雅思阅读高分技巧:单选题解题攻略
如何快速找到雅思阅读文章中的答案?
雅思阅读答题的四个方法
三大方法提高雅思阅读速度
雅思阅读长难句的分析方法
雅思阅读摘要题答题方法和步骤
雅思阅读考试题型分类介绍
提高雅思阅读速度需避免五个习惯
提高雅思阅读效率的备考方法
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |