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Efficacy and Meaning in Ancient and Modern Political Satire: Aristophanes, Lenny Bruce, and Jon Stewart

This essay addresses historically and comparatively the ‘efficacy’ of political satire in particular, first with an analysis of a highly poltical comedy by Aristophanes (‘Acharnians’), and then with two modern examples from American comedy, Lenny Bruce and Jon Stewart. This comparison will reveal just how continuous across time and genre the theoretical conundra are, and suggests how difficult, if not impossbile, it is to assess the efficacy of satire in light of the fact that the genre itself resists such attempts at assessment, often emptying of meaning through comedy the very meaning it claims to offer.