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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 Volpone
Act 5, Scene 2
Explanation and Analysis—Greed:
Volpone is a satire. All the characters in the play have overblown traits that Jonson saw as common to the wealth-obsessed world of the Renaissance elite, and the dysfunction he portrays in the social and legal worlds of 17th-century Venice further satirizes the rise of commerce and merchant capitalism. Because Venice was a prime location on the coast of the Italian peninsula and enjoyed a historical dominance of Mediterranean trade, it was a major economic center. With this in mind, Jonson satirizes the stereotype of Venice as an obsessively greedy and commercial city.
Consider Mosca’s observation in Act 5, Scene 2:
Merchants may talk of trade, and your great signiors
Of land that yields well; but if Italy
Have any glebe more fruitful than these fellows,
I am deceived.
Related Themes:
