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ENGLISH:
Satire
GRADE: 12th Grade
TEKS:
OBJECTIVE:
The student will
apply the concept of satire to modern life and depict that understanding
in a collage patterned after the selected work of art.
MATERIALS:
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DISCUSSION:
- What makes a
situation, detail, or comment ironic?
- What makes satire?
How is it achieved?
- Who are the targets
of satire? Can you identify specific examples?
- Is the framework
or historical context into which a specific work is set important?
Give examples.
- What is the author's
or artist's goal or purpose in satirizing a person or situation?
- For Reliquariam,
identify some individual items on the artwork. How is each ironic?
- What has been
added to the individual pieces on the work?
- Why do you think
the author added a border? Would you have added one?
- How do the separate
items work together? What do you think the artist is trying to say
in the work as a whole?
- How is this work
of art like one of Hogarth's paintings? What is different in the techniques
of the works? Can you think of other art that is satiric in nature?
VOCABULARY TERMS:
Satire, Irony, Burlesque,
Symbol, Parody, Collage/Montage
PROCEDURE:
- Define and discuss
the appropriate terms, focusing clearly on irony and satire. Differentiate
the forms of irony and satire. Use various samples of satire from
modern editorials, cartoons, or commentaries. Discuss the aspects
of satire, irony, and burlesque that are employed and what the various
targets of these satires include. Analyze the use of humor and attempt
to classify the satire as Juvenalian or Horatian.
- Connect contemporary
satire in today's media to that of literature. Consider such works
as Gulliver's Travels, "A Modest Proposal," Brave New World,
Animal Farm, The Miser, Canterbury Tales.
- Move from literature
and words to the realm of art with one or more of William Hogarth's
works, often found in senior literature textbooks. Discuss the historical
background, then focus on the picture. Discuss specific items in the
paintings and how each is an example of satire.
- Discuss Benes'
Reliquarium as it is an example of satire. Share with students
some of the notes on the "bits" that comprise the whole. For example,
one is a piece of shoe polish cloth from F. Lee Bailey, one of the
producers of the Today Show who was covering the O.J. Simpson trail.
The bit of oxygen tube came from the sound engineer working for Ace
Frehly of KISS, who used oxygen before performances. The piece of
Elizabeth Taylor's shoe was a gift to Barton from the shoes purchased
at an AIDS benefit. Nancy Reagan's napkin came from a restaurant where
she ate chocolate mousse.
- Identify several
aspects of modern life which might be appropriate topics for criticism
through the use of satire. Connect these ideas (greed, materialism,
dishonesty. . .) to an item which can be correlated to a high-profile
individual. Create a facsimile of this object and place it on paper,
then add artistic background. Also add the name of the individual
or appropriate commentary. Pattern this collage after the art.
- As an alternate
assignment -- use one of the works of literature as a springboard
and create a collage which might be connected with the work of literature.
For example, create a collage which might connect to Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels or to Chaucer's Prologue of The Canterbury
Tales (a piece of the wife's hose, for example, or a bit of one
of the Pardoner's relics).
EVALUATION:
Rubric which addresses
the areas of creativity, adequate number of examples, appropriate commentary,
detail, and neatness.
RESOURCES:
Internet Links (for
the teacher):
On the Road to Canterbury, Liliput and Elphinstone, http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/schuman.htm
The Bardotown
Gazette, http://www.slimeworld.org/bardotown/index.html
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