POETIC PERFORMANCES

In mimetic drama, the performance of social roles is particularly important to satire of the social contexts represented in the play. The implicitly negative nature of social roles in satire is clarified by the self-conscious nature of the performances through which they are presented. In satiric poetry, self-consciousness intensifies language. Language, of course, may be intensified by being metrical and “poetic” (that is, charged with conventions, perceived as poetic, often by way of parody). But it may also be self-consciously performative in two other ways that help define its satiric character. (1.) The language does not mean exactly what it says, and this obvious otherness of meaning signals that it is a performance enabling the language to become ironic, not merely a statement but a vehicle for commentary. (2.) The fact that the satire is being written at all calls attention to the possibility of a problem, external to the text, that the satire seeks to redress.

A further element of satiric drama is the distance it creates between the author and the message conveyed by performance. By placing the message in the mouth of a character, the satirist shields himself both from its unpleasantness and from the unpleasant fact that he is writing it, thereby retaining the force of the message without taking responsibility for it. Molière plays the role of Alceste – perhaps knowing that Alceste plays the role of Molière.