Yale Bulletin and Calendar

October 1, 2004|Volume 33, Number 5

Claude Rawson

Satirists rarely reformers,
says scholar of genre

With the popularity of the fake-news program "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and political parody dominating the e-mail circuit, it may seem like a new Age of Satire is dawning.

Claude Rawson, the Maynard Mack Professor of English, and a preeminent authority on satire, might beg to differ. By his criteria -- hearkening back to the Classical originators of the genre, Juvenal and Horace -- the talk-show parodists wouldn't get close to wearing the satirist's mantel.

According to Rawson, the greatest satirist of the English language, and perhaps any other language, is Jonathan Swift, author of "Gulliver's Travels." A project Rawson directs, the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, recently received an award of $1,024,272 (UK £553,661) from the Arts and Humanities Research Board, an agency of the British government.

Swift himself described satire as a kind of mirror in which individuals see everyone's face but their own, and Rawson has devoted much of his career to peeling away layers of irony to reveal the satirist's peculiar sleight-of-hand.

The genre's great tradition dates back to Roman verse satirists Juvenal and Horace, notes the Yale scholar. The former, says Rawson, created the indignant, "heroic" form of that genre, while Horace expressed his mockery in more urbane verse.

According to Rawson, satire spoke with a seriousness worthy of the great tradition of these Roman prototypes in the era between the 18th century -- when the likes of Swift and Alexander Pope skewered the politicians and literati of their day (as well as human foibles in general) -- and the 20th century, when German playwright Bertolt Brecht developed the dramatic form of social satire known as "epic theater." Swift, whose most widely read essay, "A Modest Proposal," recommends disposing of unwanted Irish children by eating them, is sometimes called Juvenalian but writes in a lower key, contends Rawson. Pope, who wrote such epic satires as "The Dunciad" and "The Rape of the Lock" as well as the "Imitations of Horace," often wrote in a Juvenalian "grand manner," notes the Yale scholar.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that satirists write chiefly to improve the world, Rawson says sparking reform is rarely the author's main intent. "Generally satirists are very angry and want to hurt," he says.

Often invoking a previous Golden Age -- real or imagined -- the satirist is angry at an imperfect present that falls short of a glorious past, contends Rawson. For this reason, scholars of the subject, Rawson among them, have observed that satirists are often fundamentally conservative, always yearning to revive the ideals of a bygone era rather than create a new order. Brecht, a decidedly left-wing satirist, is a notable exception to the rule, he says.

A dedicated teacher who lectures worldwide, Rawson is also a prolific author. Many of his books have become classics in their field. These include "Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress," "Gulliver and the Gentle Reader," "Order from Confusion Sprung," "Satire and Sentiment, 1660-1830" and "God, Gulliver, and Genocide."

Rawson has also served as chief editor for a number of scholarly collections, anthologies and reference works, including "The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism," "The Blackwell Critical Biographies" and the "Unwin Critical Library." From 1989 to 2001 he served as general editor and chair of the Yale Boswell Editions, and he was an editor of the Modern Language Review and Yearbook of English Studies from 1974 to 1988. Rawson was awarded the Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service as an Editor from the Conference of Editors of Learned Journals in 1988.

A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the British Society for 18th-Century Studies, Rawson has written numerous articles and reviews in academic journals and in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review and the London Review of Books.

Rawson, with collaborators in the United Kingdom and Australia, supported by a distinguished team of volume editors, will oversee the scholarly edition of the works of Jonathan Swift for Cambridge University Press. The forthcoming 16-volume work will be the first time all of Swift's prose and poetry will be gathered in one edition. The collection, Rawson says, will use cutting-edge editorial methods and electronic technology that were not available the last time a scholarly edition of Swift's work came out 40 years ago. The fully annotated edition will also reflect new research on Swift's contemporaries and milieu and will help fill out scholars' understanding of the author of "Tale of the Tub," "The Battle of the Books" and "Gulliver's Travels" -- some of the greatest satires ever written, according to Rawson.

In addition to his editorial obligations and regular teaching load, Rawson will be hosting a conference Oct. 8-9 at the Yale Center for British Art celebrating the life and work of Henry Fielding, most famous as the author of "The History of Tom Jones." (See related story.)

-- By Dorie Baker

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