Frye's Definition
Critic Northrop Frye said that Menippean satire moves rapidly between styles and points of view. Such satires deal less with human characters than with the single-minded mental attitudes, or "humours", that they represent: the pedant, the braggart, the bigot, the miser, the quack, the seducer, etc. Critic Frye observed,
| “ | The novelist sees evil and folly as social diseases, but the Menippean satirist sees them as diseases of the intellect | ” |
He illustrated this distinction by positing Squire Western (from Tom Jones) as a character rooted in novelistic realism, but the tutors Thwackum and Square as figures of Menippean satire.
Read more about this topic: Menippean Satire
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