"Satire is both a mode and a genre of verse and prose lit. that adopts a critical attitude toward its target with the goal of censuring human folly. Satire is an eminently versatile form whose structure, style, tone, and subjects vary across a wide spectrum, but generally intends, as Jonathan Swift states, "to mend the world" ("A Vindication of Mr. Gay and The Beggar's Opera").
In terms of its purpose, satire is polemical, contentiously attacking its victims with the hope of dissuading readers from vice and persuading them (to greater and lesser degrees) toward virtue. In terms of structure, satire is primarily a borrower of literary and rhetorical forms, using other genres to support its didactic agenda (see Guilhamet). As Paulson describes it, satire explores the lowest range of potential human actions within a framework or fiction that best serves its ridiculing function (Fictions of Satire). Some of satire's favorite housing fictions include diatribe (the outraged declamations of Lucilius and Juvenal);."