See also
- Carnivalesque
- Satire Ménippée (1594) – a satirical work in France during the Wars of Religion
The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities. [1] It has been broadly described as a mixture of allegory, picaresque narrative, and satirical commentary. [2] Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms of parody and mythological burlesque, [3] a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture, [3] a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, and the rapid moving between styles and points of view. [4]
The term is used by classical grammarians and by philologists mostly to refer to satires in prose (cf. the verse Satires of Juvenal and his imitators). Social types attacked and ridiculed by Menippean satires include "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds," although they are addressed in terms of "their occupational approach to life as distinct from their social behavior ... as mouthpieces of the idea they represent". [1] [5] Characterization in Menippean satire is more stylized than naturalistic, and presents people as an embodiment of the ideas they represent. [1] The term Menippean satire distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered by Aristophanes, which was based on personal attacks. [6]
The form is named after the third century BC Greek cynic parodist and polemicist Menippus. [7] His works, now lost, influenced the works of Lucian and Marcus Terentius Varro, the latter being the first to identify the genre by referring to his own satires as saturae menippeae; such satires are sometimes also termed Varronian satire. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the genre itself was in existence prior even to Menippus, with authors such as Antisthenes, Heraclides Ponticus and Bion of Borysthenes. [8]
Varro's own 150 books of Menippean satires survive only through quotations. The genre continued with Seneca the Younger, whose Apocolocyntosis , or "Pumpkinification", is the only near-complete classical Menippean satire to survive. It consisted in an irreverent parody of the deification of Emperor Claudius. [7] The Menippean tradition is also evident in Petronius' Satyricon , especially in the banquet scene "Cena Trimalchionis", which combines epic form, tragedy, and philosophy with verse and prose. Both Satyricon and Apuleius' Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) , are Menippea "extended to the limits of the novel". [9] The most complete picture of the genre in ancient times is to be found in the satires of Lucian. [10] The influence of Menippean satire can be found in ancient Greek novels, in the Roman satires of Gaius Lucilius and Horace, and in early Christian literature, including the Gospels. [11] [12] Later examples include The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius [13] and The Caesars of Julian the apostate. [14]
Bakhtin identifies a number of basic characteristics that distinguish Menippean satire from comparable genres in antiquity: [15]
Despite the apparent heterogeneity of these characteristics, Bakhtin emphasizes the "organic unity" and the "internal integrity" of the genre. He argues that Menippean satire is the best expression and the truest reflection of the social-philosophical tendencies of the epoch in which it flowered. This was the epoch of the decline of national legend, the disintegration of associated ethical norms, and the concomitant explosion of new religious and philosophical schools vying with each other over "ultimate questions". The "epic and tragic wholeness of a man and his fate" lost its power as a social and literary ideal, and consequently social 'positions' became devalued, transformed into 'roles' played out in a theatre of the absurd. Bakhtin argues that the generic integrity of Menippean satire in its expression of a decentred reality is a quality that has enabled it to exercise an immense influence over the development of European novelistic prose. [16]
According to Bakhtin, the cultural force that underpins the integrity and unity of Menippean satire as a genre, despite its extreme variability and the heterogeneity of its elements, is carnival. The genre epitomises the transposition of the "carnival sense of the world" into the language and forms of literature, a process Bakhtin refers to as Carnivalisation . Carnival as a social event is "syncretic pageantry of a ritualistic sort": its essential elements were common to a great diversity of times and places, and over time became deeply rooted in the individual and collective psyche. These elements revolved around the suspension of the laws, prohibitions and restrictions that governed the structure of ordinary life, and the acceptance and even celebration of everything that was hidden or repressed by that structure. [17] The apparently heterogeneous characteristics of Menippean satire can, in essence, be traced back to the "concretely sensuous forms" worked out in the carnival tradition and the unified "carnival sense of the world" that grew out of them. [18]
In a series of articles, Edward Milowicki and Robert Rawdon Wilson, building upon Bakhtin's theory, have argued that Menippean is not a period-specific term, as many Classicists have claimed, but a term for discursive analysis that instructively applies to many kinds of writing from many historical periods including the modern. As a type of discourse, “Menippean” signifies a mixed, often discontinuous way of writing that draws upon distinct, multiple traditions. It is normally highly intellectual and typically embodies an idea, an ideology or a mind-set in the figure of a grotesque, even disgusting, comic character.
The form was revived during the Renaissance by Erasmus, Burton, and Laurence Sterne, [19] while 19th-century examples include the John Buncle of Thomas Amory and The Doctor of Robert Southey. [19] The 20th century saw renewed critical interest in the form, with Menippean satire significantly influencing postmodern literature. [3] Among the works that contemporary scholars have identified as growing out of the Menippean tradition are:
According to P. Adams Sitney in "Visionary Film", Mennipea became the dominant new genre in avant-garde cinema at the turn of the century. Filmmakers he cited include Yvonne Rainer, Sidney Peterson, Michael Snow, and Hollis Frampton. [36]
For Bakhtin, Menippean satire as a genre reached its summit in the modern era in the novels and short stories of Dostoevsky. He argues that all the characteristics of the ancient Menippea are present in Dostoevsky but in a highly developed and more complex form. This was not because Dostoevsky intentionally adopted and expanded it as a form: his writing was not in any sense a stylization of the ancient genre. Rather it was a creative renewal based in an instinctive recognition of its potential as a form through which to express the philosophical, spiritual and ideological ferment of his time. It could be said that "it was not Dostoevsky's subjective memory, but the objective memory of the very genre in which he worked, that preserved the peculiar features of the ancient menippea." The generic features of Menippean satire were the ground on which Dostoevsky was able to build a new literary genre, which Bakhtin calls Polyphony. [37]
Critic Northrop Frye said that Menippean satire moves rapidly between styles and points of view.[ citation needed ] Such satires deal less with human characters than with the single-minded mental attitudes, or "humours", that they represent: the pedant, the braggart, the bigot, the miser, the quack, the seducer, etc. Frye observed,
The novelist sees evil and folly as social diseases, but the Menippean satirist sees them as diseases of the intellect […] [23]
He illustrated this distinction by positing Squire Western (from Tom Jones ) as a character rooted in novelistic realism, but the tutors Thwackum and Square as figures of Menippean satire.
Frye found the term 'Menippean satire' to be "cumbersome and in modern terms rather misleading", and proposed as replacement the term 'anatomy' (taken from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy ). In his theory of prose fiction it occupies the fourth place with the novel, romance and confession. [23]
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.
Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, based on some set of stylistic criteria Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility.
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.
The Satyricon, Satyriconliber, or Satyrica, is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century AD, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petronius. The Satyricon is an example of Menippean satire, which is different from the formal verse satire of Juvenal or Horace. The work contains a mixture of prose and verse ; serious and comic elements; and erotic and decadent passages. As with The Golden Ass by Apuleius, classical scholars often describe it as a Roman novel, without necessarily implying continuity with the modern literary form.
A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length. They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even the rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.
Carnivalesque is a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos. It originated as "carnival" in Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and was further developed in Rabelais and His World. For Bakhtin, "carnival" is deeply rooted in the human psyche on both the collective and individual level. Though historically complex and varied, it has over time worked out "an entire language of symbolic concretely sensuous forms" which express a unified "carnival sense of the world, permeating all its forms". This language, Bakhtin argues, cannot be adequately verbalized or translated into abstract concepts, but it is amenable to a transposition into an artistic language that resonates with its essential qualities: it can, in other words, be "transposed into the language of literature". Bakhtin calls this transposition the carnivalization of literature. Although he considers a number of literary forms and individual writers, it is François Rabelais, the French Renaissance author of Gargantua and Pantagruel, and the 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, that he considers the primary exemplars of carnivalization in literature.
In literary theory and philosophy of language, the chronotope is how configurations of time and space are represented in language and discourse. The term was taken up by Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin who used it as a central element in his theory of meaning in language and literature. The term itself comes from the Russian xронотоп, which in turn is derived from the Greek χρόνος ('time') and τόπος ('space'); it thus can be literally translated as "time-space." Bakhtin developed the term in his 1937 essay "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel". Here Bakhtin showed how different literary genres operated with different configurations of time and space, which gave each genre its particular narrative character.
The Satire Ménippée or La Satyre Ménippée de la vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne was a political and satirical work in prose and verse that mercilessly parodied the Catholic League and Spanish pretensions during the Wars of Religion in France, and championed the idea of an independent but Catholic France. The work was a collaborative effort of various functionaries, lawyers, clerics and scholars. It appeared at a time that coincided with the ascendance of Henry IV of France and the defeat of the League.
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world. Slipping into nihilism with “terrible anguish”, he is determined to commit suicide. However, after a chance encounter with a young girl, he begins an inner journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man. The story first appeared in Dostoevsky's self-published monthly journal A Writer's Diary in 1877.
In literature, polyphony is a feature of narrative, which includes a diversity of simultaneous points of view and voices. Caryl Emerson describes it as "a decentered authorial stance that grants validity to all voices." The concept was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin, using a metaphor based on the musical term polyphony.
The grotesque body is a concept, or literary trope, put forward by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of François Rabelais' work. The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble, and ideal to the material level. Through the use of the grotesque body in his novels, Rabelais related political conflicts to human anatomy. In this way, Rabelais used the concept as "a figure of unruly biological and social exchange".
"Bobok" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that first appeared in 1873 in his self-published Diary of a Writer. The story consists largely of a dialogue between recently deceased occupants of graves in a cemetery, most of whom are fully conscious and retain all the features of their living personalities. The dialogue is overheard by a troubled writer who has lain down near the graves.
Rabelais and His World is a scholarly work by the 20th century Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. It is considered to be a classic of Renaissance studies, and an important work in literary studies and cultural interpretation.
Skaz is a Russian oral form of narrative. The word comes from skazátʹ, "to tell", and is also related to such words as rasskaz, "short story" and skazka, "fairy tale". The speech makes use of dialect and slang in order to take on the persona of a particular character. The peculiar speech, however, is integrated into the surrounding narrative, and not presented in quotation marks. Skaz is not only a literary device, but is also used as an element in Russian monologue comedy.
Gary Saul Morson is an American literary critic and Slavist. He is particularly known for his scholarly work on the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. Prior to this he was chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania for many years.
The themes in the writings of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, which consist of novels, novellas, short stories, essays, epistolary novels, poetry, spy fiction and suspense, include suicide, poverty, human manipulation, and morality. Dostoevsky was deeply Eastern Orthodox and religious themes are found throughout his works, especially in those written after his release from prison in 1854. His early works emphasised realism and naturalism, as well as social issues such as the differences between the poor and the rich. Elements of gothic fiction, romanticism, and satire can be found in his writings. Dostoyevsky was "an explorer of ideas", greatly affected by the sociopolitical events which occurred during his lifetime. After his release from prison his writing style moved away from what Apollon Grigoryev called the "sentimental naturalism" of his earlier works and became more concerned with the dramatization of psychological and philosophical themes.
Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics is a book by the 20th century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. It was originally published in 1929 in Leningrad under the title Problems of Dostoevsky's Creative Art but was re-published with significant additions under the new title in 1963 in Moscow. The book was first translated into English in 1973 by R. William Rotsel but this version is now out of print. Caryl Emerson's 1984 translation is the version now used for academic discussion in English.
The twentieth century Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin wrote extensively on the concept of dialogue. Although Bakhtin's work took many different directions over the course of his life, dialogue always remained the "master key" to understanding his worldview. Bakhtin described the open-ended dialogue as "the single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human life". In it "a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium."
Caryl Emerson is an American literary critic, slavist and translator. She is best known for her books and scholarly commentaries on the Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. She has translated some of Bakhtin's most influential works, including Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Emerson was Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at Princeton University from 1988 until her retirement in 2015. From 1980 to 1987 she was a professor of Russian Literature at Cornell.