This evasive way of abuse, satiric voices in English verse satire, 1640-1700

grantor: University of TorontoCommencing from a recognition of the ways in which the didactic ends attributed to satire in the later seventeenth-century were frustrated by the association of the genre with motives of malice and spite, this thesis examines the means employed by satirists to evade responsibility for their invectives. The obtrusiveness of satiric voice characteristic of the genre focused attention upon the unpleasantly censorious character of the satirist, thereby accentuating the subjectivity of satire and obstructing its polemical message. Making reference to a broad range of texts from print and manuscript sources. I argue that poets of the period 1640-1700 responded to this dilemma by employing a variety of rhetorical and literary devices to conceal the satirist's voice, and generate an illusion of objectivity that enhanced the credibility of the satiric attack. My Introduction examines the inadequacy of modern responses to the theoretical problems posed by satiric topicality. Chapter 1 surveys didactic theories of satire in the seventeenth-century, and the ways in which the prominence of satiric voice undermines the genre's polemical intent: it concludes with a discussion of theories of satire that minimized the satirist's responsibility for his or her invective. Chapter 2 features a discussion of the use of prosopopaeia to conceal the satirist's voice. Chapter 3 sketches out the operations of rhetorical ethos, with particular reference to Horace, and to its use by Cowley and Dryden. Chapter 4 explores the uses of pathos in Juvenalian satire, and focuses upon John Cleveland. In Chapter 5, the use of burlesque forms as a means of projecting the voice of the satiric victim is discussed. Chapter 6 examines how allusion to the satires of the past is employed to authorize topical satire; the chapter concludes with an examination of translation as a means of satiric concealment. My Conclusion looks ahead to eighteenth-century developments in satire that tended to foreground aesthetic rather than didactic considerations.Ph.D