The psychological mystique

"The Springs of Liberty takes up questions of literary history and theory and explores sources of power harnessed by modern political doctrines and the journalism that conveys them to the public. These forces of opinion are traced to a tradition deeper and older than either: satire. In that tradition - its power, diversity, and license - the author locates the spirit of free speech."--BOOK JACKET. "Justman considers satire not as a genre but as a potential available to different genres. He contrasts a line of English literature critical of journalism - writers such as Addison, Austen, and Trollope - with another less mannerly, represented by writers who exploded the stock formulas of which so much journalism is made, a line running from Swift through Dickens to Joyce and Orwell. Discussed too is the exploitation of the power of satire in political doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.