Satire: A Critical Reintroduction by Dustin Griffin

Published 1994 · 256 pages · 72,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism

How hard is Satire: A Critical Reintroduction to read?

Satire: A Critical Reintroduction scores 67 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 63 out of 100
Clear academic prose with some period-specific rhetorical and generic vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Abstraction: 72 out of 100
Theoretical revisionism requires sustained abstract argument about genre and purpose.
Information density: 73 out of 100
Covers a wide historical and critical range with precise argumentative density.
Narrative indirection: 16 out of 100
Argues revisionist positions directly against named predecessors.
Symbolic density: 11 out of 100
Concepts of play and provocation are analytical, not symbolic.
Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
Griffin occasionally adopts a satiric detachment in criticising moralistic satire scholarship.
Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
The argument for satire's indeterminacy is itself enacted in some open-ended passages.
Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
Six thematic chapters organised as a sustained revisionist argument.

How Satire: A Critical Reintroduction is regarded

Satire: A Critical Reintroduction holds a literary regard score of 71 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

Dustin Griffin