Library / Literary Satire
Reference Guide
What Is Literary Satire?
Literary satire uses irony, exaggeration, incongruity or comic framing to expose, question or play with people, institutions, ideas and conventions.
Satire and absurdity
Satire can become absurd when the exaggeration is pushed so far that the form itself becomes part of the joke. The reader recognizes a familiar convention and then watches it behave impossibly.
The book can be the target
A work can satirize assumptions about what a novel should contain, how much content a book should have or what readers think they are buying.
Explore EW
EW uses an intentionally extreme premise to play with the expectations attached to the word “novel.”