Satire/Notable satires

Literary

Poems - political

Edmund Spenser Mother Hubberds Tale (1591). An allegorical satire on church governance and the court, following the failure of Spenser's hopes for preferment.

Andrew Marvell Last Instructions to a Painter (1667). Satirising recent naval disasters and the court.

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel . An account of recent history under the guise of Jewish history.

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Mask of Anarchy (1819, published 1832). Savagely attacking the reactionary Tory government.

Lord Byron The Vison of Judgment (1822). This both responded to Robert Southey's attack on Byron in the preface to his A Vision of Judgment, and satirised the actions of George III who had recently died.

Poems - on other writers

Geoffrey Chaucer Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas in the Canterbury Tales. A parody of chivalric verse. The tale is interrupted by the Host who will not put up with any more of the "rhyme doggerel".

Alexander Pope The Dunciad (1728 & 1743). An account of the triumph of Dulness. Pope's main target changed between versions from Lewis Theobald (who had exposed Pope's inadequacy as an editor of Shakespeare) to Colley Cibber.

Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Byron, responding to the attack on his first volume of verse in the Edinburgh Quarterly, also took the opportunity to lambast contemporary poets whom he disliked.