Invective is the denunciation of a person by the use of derogatory epithets.
Thus Prince Hal, in Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV, calls the corpulent Falstaff "this sanguine coward, this bedpresser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of
flesh."
In his Discourse Concerning Satire (1693), John Dryden described the difference in efficacy, as a put-down, between the directness of invective and the indirectness of irony, in which a speaker maintains the advantage of cool detachment by leaving it to the circumstances to convert bland compliments into insults.
How easy is it to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to
make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of
those opprobrious terms There is ... a vast difference between the
slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates
the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.
Comments