Ebenezer Cooke (ca.1667-ca.1732), a London-born poet, wrote what some scholars consider the first American satire: “The Sotweed Factor, or A Voyage to Maryland, A Satyr” (1707). He has been fictionalized by John Barth as the comically innocent protagonist of The Sot-Weed Factor, a novel in which a series of fantastic misadventures leads Cooke to write his poem. A poet is some one who writes poetry. ... The World According To Ronald Reagan, a satirical map by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist David Horsey Satire is a technique of writing or art which exposes the follies of its subject (for example, individuals, institutions, organizations, or states) to ridicule, often as an intended means of provoking or preventing... Official language(s) None (English, de-facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,417 sq mi (32,160 km²)  - Width 90 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37°53N to 39°43N  - Longitude 75°4W to 79°33... John Simmons Barth (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work. ... The Sot-Weed Factor is a 1960 novel by John Barth that satirizes picaresque novels such as Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones. ...

Life

Not a great deal is known about the life of Cooke (whose name is sometimes spelled “Cook”). However, it is known that Cooke, like the persona of his poem, voyaged to Maryland as a young man. He entered the bar of St. George's County, Maryland, and practiced law before returning to London by 1694. He later returned to Maryland after inheriting a half interest in his father’s estate at Malden, Maryland|Malden. [1]

“The Sot-Weed Factor”

Written in Hudibrastic couplets, the poem is, on its surface, a scathing Juvenalian satire of America and its colonists, and a parody of the pamphlets that advertised colonization as easy and lucrative (Arner 38,40). The persona comes to Maryland as a tobacco merchant, or “sot-weed factor.” He is shocked by the brutishness of Native Americans and English settlers alike, and he is swindled by an “ambodexter quack,” or corrupt lawyer. He leaves the colony in disgust. Hudibrastic is a type of English verse named for Samuel Butlers Hudibras of 1672. ... Juvenalian satire is one of two types of formal satire (the other being Horatian satire) characterized primarily by contempt and invective. ... In contemporary usage, a parody is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... on tobacco usage see Tobacco smoking Species Nicotiana acuminata Nicotiana alata Nicotiana attenuata Nicotiana benthamiana Nicotiana clevelandii Nicotiana excelsior Nicotiana forgetiana Nicotiana glauca Nicotiana glutinosa Nicotiana langsdorffii Nicotiana longiflora Nicotiana obtusifolia Nicotiana paniculata Nicotiana plumbagifolia Nicotiana quadrivalvis Nicotiana repanda Nicotiana rustica Nicotianasuaveolens Nicotiana sylvestris Nicotiana tabacum Nicotiana tomentosa Ref: ITIS...

Some critics, notably including Arner, J.A. Lemay (81,93) and more recently G.A. Carey and Sarah Ford, read the poem as a dual satire, targeting the closed-minded, embittered, failed colonist as much as it satirizes the colony. This dual satire, Ford argues, helped to promote a national identity, as “the colonists become insiders who perceive the humor in the factor's inability to adapt to life in America” (1). Micklus, too, sees the poem’s humor as contributing to an aspect of American culture—namely, a tendency towards self-referential satire, later further developed by Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin (261). What is significant about the poem, for Micklus, is not what Cooke says about either the colony or the English, but how Cooke goes about showing that his speaker “is a complete ass” (253). Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 — July 12, 1804) was an American politician, leading statesman, financier, intellectual, military officer, and founder of the Federalist Party. ... Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most well known Founding Fathers of the United States. ...

Other Works

• “An ELOGY on the Death of Thomas Bordley Esquire," 1726
• December 24, 1728: "An Elegy on the Death of the Honorable Nicholas Lowe," 1728.
• 1730: publishing of "Sotweed Redivivus or the Planters Looking glass," 1730
• "The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia," 1731
• "An Elegy on the Death of the Honorable William Locke, Esquire" . . . Maryland Historical Society Baltimore, Md.
• "In Memory of the Honorable Benedict Leonard Calvert Esquire. Lieutenant Governor in the Province of Maryland" . . . U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.

(Titles and dates are taken from Mark Canada [2].)

References

• Arner, Robert D. “Ebenezer Cooke’s ‘The Sot-Weed Factor:’ The Structure of Satire.” Southern Literary Journal (Fall 1971).

• Carey, GA. "The Poem as Con Game: Dual Satire and the Three Levels of Narrative in Ebenezer Cooke’s ‘The Sot-Weed Factor.'" Southern Literary Journal, 1990.

• Canada, Mark. “Ebenezer Cook(e).” http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/canam/cooke.htm

• Ford, Sarah. “Humor's Role in Imagining America: Ebenezer Cook's ‘The Sot-Weed Factor’.” Southern Literary Journal, March, 2003.

• Lemay, J. A. Leo. Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1972.

• Micklus, Robert. “The Case Against Ebenezer Cooke's Sot-Weed Factor.” American Literature Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1984), 251-261.

External links

• "The Sot-Weed Factor," Renaissance Edition