72 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.
报刊阅读在英语教学中的作用
大学最严考勤
中学英语报刊阅读教学模式探究——从一节...
初中英语动词不定式精讲精练
传统PPP教学法与任务型教学法之比较
中国48所大学专业排名进世界200强
用趣味横生的导入方法激活课堂
美国新奥尔良发生枪击事件
校园英语短剧剧本
“四步法”攻克名词性从句
如何表达顺其自然
无处不在的选择
通过结合听说读写四技能的训练提升写作教...
英国“谢谢”应该如何表达
简单的五字短语
大学英语话剧剧本
下午茶英语表达法
学生应该脱口而出的英语口语
马云正式卸任集团CEO一职
一位英语教师眼中的英国教育
为你而生
麦当劳点餐的常见口语
10句短小精悍的英语格言
找一个支点,托起学生腾飞的翅膀——以小...
例谈初中英语阅读策略的培养
抬头就能看到希望
教授写作技巧:鼓励学生参与
灰姑娘英语版剧本
有效训练阅读策略
英语话剧剧本
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |