He then explores in detail how these elements of Menippean satire combine and operate in the literatures of classical Rome and early modern France and England, considering major texts by Varro, Petronius, Lucian, Swift, Boileau, Pope, and Richardson.

In this magisterial work, Howard D. Weinbrot offers a new and lucid account of Menippean satire. He argues that in the wake of twentieth-century critics, notably Frye and Bakhtin, this complex literary category has been too broadly associated with "philosophic ideas" expressed in dialogic voices or languages and proposes instead more rigorous but fluid criteria that incorporate several key elements.