OVERLAPPING GENRES

In Horatian performances we recognize the presence of a satirist whose judgments on an unworthy world are implied by destabilizing but nonetheless entertaining performances. The performative nature of satiric drama produces, in turn, a performance by its characters that reveals the evil or silliness of society. Satire uses, even duplicates, the generic characteristics of poetry and drama to mount a critical attack. The same seems roughly true of the novel, but the situation here is complicated by the generic closeness of the forms. Elements that define the novel – its formal self-consciousness, its implicit criticism of its predecessors, its proclamations of originality (novelty), its incorporation or reflection of broad cultures, its consequent inclusion of various dialects and ideolects, its uncertain or ambiguous relationship both to its author and to its dominant ideology – are characteristics of satire as well. Satire and the novel are massively overlapping genres.

Satire, as everyone agrees, is a parasitic form, imitating other forms by way of parody or using such imitation as a way of fixing points of reference and judgment, but imitation is another characteristic that satire shares with the novel. Novels, Barbara Herrnstein Smith asserts, imitate other forms of written discourse – histories, biographies, memoirs, letters; at a second level of imitation, they may imitate other novels as well. What makes the fit between novel and satire uncomfortable is that each tends to exploit other genres by transforming or undermining them.