Juvenal satire is characterized by bitter and abrasive attacks on individuals and society. It contrasts with Horace’s gentler ridicule. Juvenal’s satire uses exaggeration and parody to attack public figures and institutions, often with humor. Juvenile satire has been used throughout history, including by Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, George Orwell, and modern satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Juvenal satire is one of the two main divisions of satire and is characterized by its bitter and abrasive nature. It can be directly contrasted with Horace’s satire, which uses a much gentler form of ridicule to highlight madness or strangeness. A juvenile satirist is far more likely to view the targets of his satire as evil or actively harmful to society and to attack them with the serious intent of harming their reputation or power. While juvenile satire often attacks individuals on a personal level, its most common target is social criticism.
The two main categories of satire are named after the Roman writers most closely associated with their respective satirical forms. Juvenal was a poet active in the Roman Republic during the 1st century AD, best known for his scathing attacks on the public figures and institutions of the Republic, with which he disagreed. Where his predecessor Horace used gentle ridicule and absurdity to point out the flaws and foibles of Roman society, Juvenal engaged in vicious personal attacks. He has used the satirical tools of exaggeration and parody to make his targets appear monstrous or incompetent of him. While he occasionally used humor to express his own point of view, Juvenal’s satire had more in common with the invective of a political pundit than the primarily humorous form favored by most modern satirists.
The primary weapons of juvenile satire are contempt and ridicule. Often, a satirist exaggerates an opponent’s words or position, or puts them into a context that highlights his or her flaws or contradictions. A satirical piece can be delivered as a direct criticism or take the form of an extended analogy or narrative. Often, the characters in a juvenile narrative are thinly veiled representations of public figures or archetypes of existing groups or ways of thinking. Characters are made to act in such a way that the beliefs or behaviors the satirist wants to attack are made to appear evil or absurd.
Juvenal satire has been a common tool of social criticism from Juvenal’s life to the present. Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson borrowed heavily from Juvenal’s techniques in their critiques of contemporary English society. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley created juvenile mirrors of their societies to address what they saw as dangerous social and political trends. Modern satirists such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Matt Stone and South Park’s Trey Parker attack young people on a wide range of social issues.
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