The genre ofMenippean satire is a form ofsatire, usually inprose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities.[1] It has been broadly described as a mixture ofallegory,picaresque narrative, and satirical commentary.[2] Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms ofparody and mythologicalburlesque,[3] a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture,[3] arhapsodic 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 verseSatires 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 termMenippean satire distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered byAristophanes, which was based on personal attacks.[6]
Varro's own 150 books of Menippean satires survive only through quotations. The genre continued withSeneca the Younger, whoseApocolocyntosis, or "Pumpkinification", is the only near-complete classical Menippean satire to survive. It consists of an irreverentparody of thedeification of EmperorClaudius.[7] The Menippean tradition is also evident inPetronius'Satyricon, especially in the banquet scene "Cena Trimalchionis", which combines epic form, tragedy, and philosophy with verse and prose. BothSatyricon andApuleius'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 ofLucian.[10]
Bakhtin identifies a number of basic characteristics that distinguish Menippean satire from comparable genres in antiquity:[15]
There is a significantly heightened comic element, although there are exceptions (for example in Boethius).
There is anextraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention. It is not bound by the orthodoxies of legend, or by the need for historical or everyday realism, even when its central characters are based on legendary or historical figures. It freely operates in the realm of "the fantastic".
The unrestrained use of the fantastic is internally motivated by a philosophical objective: a philosophical idea, embodied in a seeker of truth, istested inextraordinary situations.
Fantastic and mystical elements are combined with a crudeslum naturalism: the 'testing of the idea' never avoids the degenerate or grotesque side of earthly existence. The man of the idea encounters "worldly evil, depravity, baseness and vulgarity in their most extreme expression".
The ideas being tested are always of an "ultimate" nature. Merely intellectual or academic problems or arguments had no place: the whole man and his whole life are at stake in the process of the testing of his idea. Everywhere there is the "stripped downpro et contra of life's ultimate questions".
A three-planed construction—Earth, Olympus and the netherworld—is apparent. Action and dialogue frequently take place on the "threshold" between the planes.
Anexperimental fantasticality in narrative point of view appears, for example the "view from above" (kataskopia).
An experimentation withpsychopathological states of mind – madness, split personality, unrestrained daydreaming, weird dreams, extreme passions, suicides etc. Such phenomena function in the Menippea to destabilize the unity of an individual and his fate – a unity that is always assumed in other genres such as the epic. The person discovers other possibilities than those apparently preordained in himself and his life: "he loses his finalized quality and ceases to mean only one thing; he ceases to coincide with himself". This non-finalization and non-coincidence is facilitated by a rudimentary form of "dialogic relationship to one's own self".
Breaches of conventional behaviour and disruptions to the customary course of events are characteristic of the Menippea. Scandals and eccentricities have the same function in 'the world' that mental disorders have in 'the individual' – they shatter the fragile unity and stability of the established order and the 'normal', expected course of events. The inappropriate, cynical word that unmasks a false idol or an empty social convention is similarly characteristic.
Sharp contrasts, abrupt transitions, oxymoronic combinations, counterintuitive comparisons and unexpected meetings between unrelated things are essential to the Menippea. Opposites are brought together, or united in a single character – the noble criminal, the virtuous courtesan, the emperor who becomes a slave.
There is often an element ofsocial utopia, usually in the form of a dream or journey to an unknown land.
Widespread use of inserted genres such as novellas, letters, speeches, diatribes, soliloquys, symposia, and poetry, frequently of a parodic nature.
A sharp satirical focus on a wide variety of contemporary ideas and issues.
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, iscarnival. The genre epitomises the transposition of the "carnival sense of the world" into the language and forms of literature, a process Bakhtin refers to asCarnivalisation. 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 byErasmus,Burton, andLaurence Sterne,[19] while 19th-century examples include theJohn Buncle ofThomas Amory andThe Doctor ofRobert Southey.[19] The 20th century saw renewed critical interest in the form, with Menippean satire significantly influencingpostmodern literature.[3] Among the works that contemporary scholars have identified as growing out of the Menippean tradition are:
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 astylization 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 callsPolyphony.[37]
CriticNorthrop 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 (fromTom Jones) as a character rooted in novelistic realism, but the tutors Thwackum and Square as figures of Menippean satire.
Frye found the termMenippean satire to be "cumbersome and in modern terms rather misleading", and proposed as replacement the termanatomy (taken from Burton'sAnatomy of Melancholy). In his theory of prose fiction it occupies the fourth place with thenovel,romance and confession.[23]
InMenippean Satire Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, Howard D. Weinbrot provides a definition of Menippean satire as follows:
My notion of Menippean satire is of a kind of satire that uses at least two different languages, genres, tones, or cultural or historical periods to combat a false and threatening orthodoxy.[38]
Jean-François Vallée from the Collège de Maisonneuve, Université de Montréal, reviewed Weinbrot's book, stating:
The most striking aspect of W.'s definition resides, for better or for worse, in its identification of a "common denominator" supposedly typical of every true Menippean satire: it should be a "variously multipronged text that variously confronts a grave and illicit threat to a normative belief system". Hence, "[i]t is a genre for serious people who see serious trouble and want to do something about it."[39]
^Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). Holquist, Michael (ed.).The Dialogic Imagination (Epic and Novel). Translated by Emerson, Caryl. University of Texas Press. p. 28.
^Weinbrot, Howard David (2005).Menippean Satire Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 6–7.ISBN978-0-8018-8210-4.
Kharpertian, Theodore D.A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires ofThomas Pynchon. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson U P, 1990.
Milowicki, Edward J. and Robert Rawdon Wilson (2002) "A Measure for Menippean Discourse: The Example of Shakespeare."Poetics Today 23: 2 (Summer 2002). 291–326.
Wilson, Robert Rawdon and Edward Milowicki (1996) "Troilus and Cressida: Voices in The Darkness of Troy." Jonathan Hart, ed.Reading The Renaissance: Culture, Poetics, and Drama. New York: Garland, 1996. 129–144, 234–240.
Wilson, Robert Rawdon (2002)The Hydra's Tale: Imagining Disgust, U Alberta Press, 2002.
Wilson, Robert Rawdon (2007)On Disgust: A Menippean Interview.Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 34: 2 (June, 2007). pp. 203–213.Disgust: A Menippean Interview
Ball, John Clement.Satire and the Postcolonial Novel. Psychology Press, 2003.
Boudou, B., M. Driol, and P. Lambercy. "Carnaval et monde renverse".Etudes sur la Satyre Menippée. Ed. Frank Lestringant and Daniel Menager. Geneva: Droz, 1986. 105–118.
Courtney, E. "Parody and Literary Allusion in Menippean Satire",Philologus 106 (1962): 86–100.
Friedman, Amy L.Postcolonial Satire: Indian Fiction and the Reimagining of Menippean Satire. Lexington, 2019.
Kaplan, Carter.Critical Synoptics: Menippean Satire and the Analysis of Intellectual Mythology. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson U P, 2000.
Kharpertian, Theodore D. "Of Models, Muddles, and Middles: Menippean Satire andPynchon'sV."Pynchon Notes 17 (Fall 1985): 3–14.
Kirk, Eugene P.Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism. New York: Garland, 1980.
Korkowski, Eugene. "Tristram Shandy, Digressions, and the Menippean Tradition".Scholia Satyrica 1.4 (1975): 3–16.
Martin, Martial, "Préface" inSatyre Menippee de la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne et de la tenue des Estats de Paris, MARTIN Martial (édition critique de), Paris, H. Champion, 2007, "Textes de la Renaissance", n° 117, 944 p. ISBN9782745314840
Musgrave, David.Grotesque Anatomies: Menippean Satire Since the Renaissance. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014.
Pawlik, Katja.Von Atlantis bis Zamonien, von Menippos bis Moers: Die Zamonien-Romane Walter Moers' im Kontext der menippeischen Satire. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. 35–103.ISBN978-3-8260-5899-8
Payne, F. Anne.Chaucer and the Menippean Satire. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1981.
Sherbert, Garry.Menippean Satire and the Poetics of Wit: Ideologies of Self-Consciousness in Dunton, D’Urfey, and Sterne. Peter Lang, 1996.
Vignes, Jean. "Culture et histoire dans la Satyre Menippee".Etudes sur la Satyre Mennippee. Ed. Frank Lestringant and Daniel Menager. Geneva: Droz, 1985. 151-99.
