Tracking his subject wherever it leads, Test finally locates satire living like a stranger in the basement . Even then it won't be trapped. Defining satire is like trying to put a shadow in a sack , he observes. What he brings upstairs - the fiercest form - is an encylopedic, historical analysis of satire. The schema Test develops to analyze satire consists of four elements: aggression, play, laughter and judgement. He extends his account to examples beyond literature, from Aristophanes to Horace to Mencken to film, TV, political cartoons, and roasts. Since the material resists a unitary theory, Test writes, his approach has been to broaden it in the hope that a satellite dish may capture what a microsope has failed to . Test uses material from myth, folklore, anthropology, popular culture and related fields to expand on RObert C. Elliot's seminal work, The Power of Satire . He attempts also to establish a mythic source for satire and to provide a new vocabulary for outmoded literay terms, and he offers a full discussion of the nature of irony in satire.