Analysis of Rochesters A Satyr Against Mankind Essay -- Satyr Against

Analysis of Rochesters A Satyr Against worldly concern Although John Wilmot, better(p) known as the Earl of Rochester, wrote A Satyr Against Mankind in 1679, his ideas are still relevant over three centuries later. His foresight in satirizing humankinds use of causal agency reinforces the intrinsic role of rationality in the human condition. But implicit in his condemnation of rationality is an intentional fallacythe speaker of the poem uses actor in the same manner as those that he claims to abhor. In doing this, Rochester widens the perimeter of his criticism to encompass the speaker as well as those he admonishes, a movement that magnifies the satire. Considering this, the anti-reason cadences of the poem become exaggerated so greatly that the speakers words must be taken lightly. Accordingly, Rochesters intent in A Satyr Against Mankind is to persuade readers to use their gift of reason humbly, a sentiment expressed by making the poems cashier one of the unreasonably reasonable people of whom he speaks. In the first line of the poem, the narrator immediately interjects a handicap that accounts for his potential poetic ineptness he is a man. He establishes the poems prevailing berth that man is a strange, prodigious creature (Wilmot 2), monstrous because of his vainglorious rationality. Rochester is careful not to detach the narrator from the humans he criticizes, but let him flare with a misleading aura of objectivity, as if by acknowledging that he is a man with unjust pride of reason he is partially exempt from the criticisms he bestows upon his ... ... rational observations and conclusions. A great thread of irony lashes together the speakers arguments in A Satyr Against Mankindhis use of reason undermines his disapproval of it. As he deplores rational thinking as kindling for interpersonal discord and fuel for useless pursuits of truthful resolve, he places himself in the same position of those he criticizes. Rochester manipulates the narrator with this paradox to heighten the satire, which ultimately exaggerates the human tendency of proudly flouting rational aptitudes to praise those who use reason with sensible restraint. Work Cited Wilmot, John. A Satyr Against Mankind. Eighteenth-Century slope Literature. Ed. Geoffrey Tillotson. Fort Worth Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1969. 3336.