Satirists thick and thin From Juvenal to Armando Iannucci, satire is an ancient and necessary art - Michael Silk

What is satire? A short, provisional definition might be: mocking criticism (more or less artistic) of current human behaviour. Current: not necessarily strictly contemporary behaviour, but, so to speak, behaviour still in the public domain. Criticism: unlike comedy, which may be sympathetic (as Pirandello argued) or “innocent” (Freud) or all-embracing (Bakhtin), satire is negative and addresses a definable target. But mocking criticism: in the Gospels, Jesus is frequently critical of human behaviour, but without mockery, and no one reads the Evangelists’ Jesus as a satirist; contrast Plato’s Socrates, who does mock, and can be so read. And human behaviour: the subject of satire is (in Juvenal’s words) “whatever people do”, its domain the moral and social realm. We do not associate satire with philosophical logic or nature poetry – either of which may have profound human implications, but neither of which is centred on that moral and social realm.