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George A. Test. Satire: Spirit and Art. Tampa: South Florida, 1991. Pp. x + 300. $39.95.
Had not Gilbert Highet first used the title, Mr. Test might have called his work "An Anatomy of Satire." Because his acknowledged debt to Robert Elliott's The Power of Satire encouraged him to be ' 'receptive to extraliterary sources," he includes the "Dakota and Koyemshi ritual clowns" and Lenny Bruce in the same paragraph shortly after a discussion of the fool in.folk literature, his sophistication by Arbuthnot, and his dismissal by Gay and Fielding. Although he includes sculpture, the dance, the pictorial, "and much else," Mr. Test emphasizes drama and literature,...