In its eleven essays, Theorizing Satire: Essays in Literary Criticism re-explores old issues from new perspectives while opening up new dimensions of satire for critical analysis. Adapting to its object of study - a genre named after the Roman hash satura lanx - this eclectic collection brings the insights of New Criticism, philology, rhetorical analysis, anthropology, genre theory, semiotics, deconstruction, cultural criticism, and the new historicism to bear upon classical, British, continental, and American satire. These essays seek useful generalizations about satire while at the same time offering close readings of individual authors whose work in a variety of cultural and temporal settings has broadened and enriched the genre. In discussions that range from Lucilius to Joe Bob Briggs, the collection passes through the verse of Horace, Pope, and Swift, novels of the German Enlightenment, the operas of W.S. Gilbert, the lyrics of John Berryman, and the postmodernist British campus novel. Each essay attempts to bring something of profit to the satiric neophyte and specialist alike.
Kirk Combe is a Professor of English at Denison University in Ohio. He teaches and researches in the areas of early modern British satire and drama, critical and cultural theory, popular culture, and pedagogical theory. On these topics he's published a number of books and articles, to include "A Martyr for Sin: Rochester's Critique of Polity, Sexuality, and Society" (University of Delaware Press, 1998) and "Theorizing Satire: Essays in Literary Criticism" (St. Martins Press, 1995). He's also published short fiction and poetry in literary journals. His first novel, titled "2084," has been published by Mayhaven Publishing in 2009.
"2084" is a work of apocalyptic speculative fiction similar to Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" or, more recently, "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood." Obviously, Combe's book plays off of George Orwell's "1984," but with some important differences. Where Orwell predicted communistic dictatorships as the future political threat to humanity, Combe envisions that menace to be corporate capitalism. His novel imagines, or, more accurately, projects, what the state of the world might be by the year 2084 if the forces of cut-throat enterprise continue to impose their agenda of jingoism, religiosity, and, above all else, profit-at-all-costs on the planet. While the story has elements of science fiction, thriller, and even spy intrigue to it, at heart the novel is literary fiction and dark satire dealing with the political, economic, and ecological predicaments facing the new century.
Combe has a B.A. from Davidson College (North Carolina) and an M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College (Vermont). He completed his doctoral study at Oxford University, England, where he received a D.Phil. in English Literature. Combe is originally from Idaho, has taught at several universities in Europe and the United States, and prior to becoming a teacher spent several years playing professional basketball in Switzerland and Germany.
Combe believes that fiction should not be a pleasant escape from social reality, but an intensive and imaginative exploration of it.
