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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
Key Examples in The Faerie Queene
Book I: Canto I
Explanation and Analysis—Saintes and Popes:
Spenser alludes satirically to Catholic practices and ideas throughout the poem as part of the Protestant polemic central to the work. After vanquishing Error, for example, the Redcross Knight and Una seek refuge in a home that resembles a Catholic monastery:
Arriued there, the little house they fill,
Ne looke for entertainement, where none was:
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will;
The noblest mind the best contentment has.
With faire discourse the euening so they pas:
For that old man of pleasing wordes had store,
And well could file his tongue as smooth as glas;
He told of Saintes and Popes, and euermore
He strowd an Aue-Mary after and before.
Related Themes:
Book II: Canto VII
Explanation and Analysis—God Below the Sky:
Spenser’s critical description of Mammon, the god of wealth and money, satirizes economic greed. When Guyon calls upon Mammon to identify himself, Mammon states:
Unlock with LitCharts A+God of the world and worldlings I me call,
Great Mammon, greatest god below the skye,
That of my plenty poure out vnto all,
And vnto none my graces do enuye:
Riches, renowme, and principality,
Honour, estate, and all this worldes good,
For which men swinck and sweat incessantly,
Fro me do flow into an ample flood,
And in the hollow earth haue their eternall brood.
Related Themes:
Book III: Canto IX
Explanation and Analysis—The Cuckold :
In Canto IX, Britomart, Satyrane, and a small cluster of other knights attempt to seek refuge from a storm in the castle of Malbecco. Through the figure of Malbecco, Spenser satirizes a common target of early modern folk humor: the cuckold, or in other words, a man whose wife conducts adulterous affairs. Of Malbecco, whose name means “evil goat,” the narrator writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But he is old, and withered like hay,
Vnfit faire Ladies seruice to supply;
The priuie guilt whereof makes him alway
Suspect her truth, and keepe continuall spy
Vpon her with his other blincked eye;
Ne suffreth he resort of liuing wight
Approch to her, ne keepe her company,
But in close bowre her mewes from all mens sight,
Depriu’d of kindly ioy and naturall delight.
Related Themes:
Book III: Canto X
Explanation and Analysis—Paris and Helen:
Spenser satirizes the Trojan War in Book III of The Faerie Queene. Britomart and a small band of knights have sought refuge in the home of the paranoid Malbecco, and one of the guests, Paridell, has begun to court and seduce Malbecco’s wife Hellenore. Utilizing the satirical techniques of “mock-epic,” which employs the lofty language of epic poetry to discuss minor and petty themes, Spenser writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+No fort so fensible, no wals so strong,
But that continuall battery will riue,
Or daily siege through dispuruayance long,
And lacke of reskewes will to parley driue;
And Peace, that vnto parley eare will giue,
Will shortly yeeld it selfe, and will be made
The vassall of the victors will byliue:
That stratageme had oftentimes assayd
This crafty Paramoure, and now it plaine displayd.
Related Themes:
Book V: Proem
Explanation and Analysis—Right Now is Wrong:
In the Proem to Book V, the most directly political section of The Faerie Queene, Spenser uses hyperbole to satirize what he believes to be the impoverished values and priorities of his own day in comparison to those of the classical and medieval epochs. Of the comparison between his own era and the past, the narrator writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For that which all men then did vertue call,
Is now cald vice; and that which vice was hight,
Is now hight vertue, and so us’d of all:
Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right,
As all things else in time are chaunged quight.
Ne wonder; for the heauens reuolution
Is wandred farre, from where it first was pight,
And so doe make contrarie constitution
Of all this lower world, toward his dissolution.
Book V: Canto II
Explanation and Analysis—Equality and Hierarchy:
In Book V, the Book of Justice, Spenser turns his attention to more explicitly political concerns, and he fiercely satirizes popular movements of his day that called for greater economic and political equality. Arthegall, the Knight of Justice, and his metallic sidekick, Talus, encounter a Giant surrounded by a large and frenzied crowd of people. They listen to the Giant’s speech, in which he promises to bring about universal equality not only politically but geologically. To the approval of the assembled crowd, the Giant states:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Therefore I will throw downe these mountaines hie,
And make them leuell with the lowly plaine:
These towring rocks, which reach vnto the skie,
I will thrust downe into the deepest maine,
And as they were, them equalize againe.
Tyrants that make men subiect to their law,
I will suppresse, that they no more may raine;
And Lordings curbe, that commons ouer-aw;
And all the wealth of rich men to the poore will draw.
