From Abrams and Harpham, “A Glossary of Literary Terms”
Renaissance humanism assumed the dignity and central position of human beings in the universe; emphasized the importance in education of studying classical imaginative and philosophical literature, although with emphasis on its moral and practical rather than its aesthetic values; and insisted on the primacy, in ordering human life, of reason (considered the universal and defining human faculty) as opposed to the instinctual appetites and the “animal” passions. Many humanists also stressed the need, in education, for a rounded development of an individual’s diverse powers–physical, mental, artistic, and moral–as opposed to a merely technical or specialized kind of training. (144)
Satire can be described as the literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. It differs from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire derides; that is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt that exists outside the work itself. That butt may be an individual (in “personal satire”), or a type of person, a class, an institution, a nation, or even the entire human race. (320)
The term utopia designates the class of fictional writings that represent an ideal, nonexistent political and social way of life. It derives from Utopia (1515-16), a book written in Latin by the Renaissance humanist Sir Thomas More which describes a perfect commonwealth; More formed his title by conflating the Greek words “eutopia” (good place) and “outopia” (no place). The first and greatest instance of the literary type was Plato’s Republic (late fourth century BCE), which sets forth, in dialogue, the eternal Idea, or Form, of a perfect commonwealth that can at best be merely approximated by political organizations in the actual world. Most of the later utopias, like that of Sir Thomas More, represent their ideal state in the fiction of a distant country reached by a venturesome traveler. (378)
