Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originality of perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead, it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies. What they do is to look at familiar conditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful, or affected. Satire jars us out of complacence into a pleasantly shocked realization that many of the s we unquestioningly accept are false. Don Quixote derides the stupidity of knights Brave New World ridicules the pretensions of science; A Modest Proposal dramatizes starvation by advocating cannibalism. None of these ideas is original. Chivalry was suspect before Cervantes, humanists objected to the claims of pure science before Aldous Huxley, and people were aware of famine before Swift. It was not the originality of the idea that made these satires popular. It was the manner of expression, the satiric method that made them interesting and entertaining. Satires are read because they are aesthetically satisfying works of art, not because they are morally wholesome or ethically instructive.

     They are stimulating and refreshing because with commonsense briskness they brush away illusions and secondhand opinions. With spontaneous irreverence, satire rearranges perspectives, scrambles familiar objects into incongruous juxtaposition, and speaks in a personal idiom instead of abstract platitude. 

    Satire exists because there is need for it. It has lived because readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus, an irreverent reminder that they live in a world of platitudinous thinking, cheap moralizing, and foolish philosophy. Satire serves to prod people into an awareness of truth, though rarely to any action on behalf of truth. Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, and read in popular media is sanctimonious, sentimental, and only partially true. Life resembles in only a slight degree the popular image of it. Soldiers rarely hold the ideals that movies attribute to them, nor do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfish service of humanity. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them when they do not hear them expressed.

    或許諷刺文學最顯著的特點是其視角的新穎性和獨特性。 諷刺作品很少有創(chuàng)造性的思想。 相反，它用一種新的形式把人們熟悉的東西呈現(xiàn)出來。 諷刺作家沒有為世界貢獻新的哲學。 他們所做的就是采取這樣一種立場來看待熟悉的環(huán)境，使得它們看上去愚蠢、有害或者造作。 諷刺作品使我們排除了自滿情緒，并愉快地驚嘆道許多我們毫無疑問地接受的價值觀是錯誤的。 《堂吉訶德》使騎士看起來愚蠢可笑； 《奇妙的新世界》嘲弄了科學的自命不凡；《溫和的建議》戲劇性地提倡同類相食來消滅饑餓。 所有這些觀點都不是創(chuàng)造性的。 在塞萬提斯以前騎士制度就受到了懷疑，在阿爾道斯·赫胥黎以前的人文主義者就反對純科學的主張，而且在斯威夫特以前就認識了饑荒。 并不是獨創(chuàng)性的思考使這些諷刺作品變得流行，而是表達的方式、諷刺的方法手段使它們變得有趣和引人入勝。 人們讀諷刺作品是因為在美感上它們是令人滿意的藝術作品，而不是因為道德的完美和倫理的說教。 它們有啟發(fā)性、使人耳目一新是因為它們用簡明的常識洗刷去了幻覺和舊的觀點。 諷刺作品用自然的嘲諷態(tài)度重新設置了觀點，將熟悉的事物自相矛盾地置在一起。 諷刺文學用自己的語言，而不是采用抽象的陳詞濫調(diào)來表達。 諷刺作品的存在是由于有需求。 它的存在是因為讀者欣賞使人耳目一新的刺激，毫不客氣地提醒他們活在一個思相陳腐、道德低廉、哲學荒謬的世界里。 諷刺作品有助于促進人們認識真相，雖然很少促動人們?yōu)檎胬矶�行動�?它有助于提醒人們?nèi)粘Ｃ浇橹兴�見所聞所談的許多東西是假裝神圣、感情用事或半真半假。 生活只在很少程度上與它流行的映像相象，戰(zhàn)士很少有電影賦予他們的完美，一般的公民也很少奉獻他們的生命為人類無私的服務。 明智的人們了解這些事理，但當他們沒有聽到這些事理，就傾向于把它們忘掉。