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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Part 1, Prologue
Explanation and Analysis—So Many St. Thomases:
In the Prologue, Cervantes makes multiple allusions to key figures in philosophy and theology in order to satirize the authors of his own day. Noting that his own book, Don Quixote, has no “marginalia or endnotes,” he writes:
I’m coming out with a book as dry as esparto grass, [...] without any marginalia or endnotes, unlike other books I see that, even though they are fictional and not about religious subjects, are so crammed with maxims from Aristotle, Plato and the whole herd of philosophers that they amaze their readers, who consider the authors to be well-read, erudite and eloquent men? And when they quote the Holy Scriptures! Anyone would take them for no less than so many St Thomases and other doctors of the Church.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Incurable Disease:
After the priest recommends that they spare Don Quixote’s poetry books, noting that they are far more intellectual and therefore less damaging than his books of chivalric literature, Don Quixote’s niece uses a metaphor that compares interest in poetry to an “incurable disease” in her argument to add the poetry books to the bonfire:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Oh sir,’ cried the niece, ‘please have them burned like the rest, because it could well happen that once my uncle gets over his chivalry illness he starts reading all these other books and takes it into his head to become a shepherd and wander about the forests and meadows singing and playing music and, what would be even worse than that, turn into a poet, which they say is a catching and incurable disease.’
‘The girl’s right,’ said the priest, ‘and it’ll be a good idea to remove this dangerous stumbling-block from our friend’s way.'
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Lycurgus and Solon:
In a heavily satirical scene in which Don Quixote, the priest, and the barber debate about politics, Cervantes alludes to historical and mythological figures associated with statecraft and governance:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And as the conversation developed they came to the subject that is sometimes called reason of state and methods of government, and they all corrected this abuse and condemned that one, and reformed one custom and forbad another, and each of the three men turned into a new legislator, a present-day Lycurgus or a modern Solon; and they subjected society to such radical reforms that anyone would have thought they’d taken it to a forge and brought away a different one [...]
