Students review traditional targets for satire--pompous, domineering and hypocritical people; social, political and religious institutions--and traditional uses of satire--to amuse, criticize or persuade with varying degrees of subtlety. In this program, songs, essays, poems and works of fiction drawn from many periods illuminate the origins, development and results of this genre. Satirists such as Swift, Shaw, Woody Allen, and Dorothy Parker are presented. 

Continue your exploration of the early history of utopia by examining notable works produced during the two centuries following More's initial work. Compare and contrast the ideas of "classical utopia" and "critical utopia" and understand how laughter was an integral part of 18th-century utopian storytelling, focusing on Voltaire's Candide and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.