Formal and rhetorical approaches

Abstract

In The Cankered Muse, a study of satire published in 1959, Alvin Kernan blames biographical and historical methods of criticism for some of the misunderstandings which surround satire. He deplores the way in which these approaches deny satirical works the autonomy of a work of art and cause criticism to ‘degenerate into discussion of an author’s moral character and the economic and social conditions of his time’. As an alternative he suggests that we should consider the satirical works as ‘a construct of symbols — situations, scenes, character, language — put together to express some particular vision of the world’ and adds: The individual parts must be seen in terms of their function in the total poem and not judged by reference to things outside the poem such as the medical history of the author or the social scene in which he wrote’. This is an important statement and one that is particularly pertinent to the present study because, in justifying his preferred method, Kernan denounces both of the other approaches we have identified for consideration.