Anne Lake Prescott
Fall 2001
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We will take up the secondary literature as we go along.
I will, with shameless narcissism, distribute copies of my brief Cambridge encyclopedia article on satire. On England, see my longer piece on Tudor Satire in the Cambridge Companion to English literature 1500-1600, ed. Arthur Kinney.
Remember that the most famous part, the "Cena Trimalchionis," had not yet been rediscovered in the Renaissance.
Author |
Material |
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Lucian |
Selected Satires. We will focus on the True History. |
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Francis Godwin |
The Man in the Moon, on the trip of Speedy Gonzales to the moon, if in print---at worst we'll have a few pages and a couple of illustrations. |
Author |
Material |
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Erasmus |
The Praise of Folly |
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Erasmus |
Some photocopied excerpts from the Colloquies |
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Erasmus |
Julius Exclusus (a modernization of Seneca's Pumpkinification [or, more strictly, "gourdification"] of Emperor Claudius, not as funny as it should be but influential |
Author |
Material |
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Thomas More |
Utopia |
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Various |
Jokes photocopied from Tudor jestbooks. For more jests, see the collections ed. P.M. Zall and W.C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare Jest-Books. |
Author |
Material |
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Ulrich von Hutten and others |
A few photocopied pages from The Letters of Obscure Men by Ulrich von Hutten and others |
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François Rabelais |
First Pantagruel and then Gargantua. Any translation will do, but try at some point to look at Urquhart's 1653 translation. Or read the French. |
The Third Book and The Fourth Book. The last several chapters of The Fifth Book (which I, like many, doubt is authentic).
Author |
Material |
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Alberti |
A couple of dialogues (photocopied) |
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Louise Labé |
Le débat (between Folly and Love; photocopied trans. by Robert Greene, 1584) |
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John Donne |
Photocopy of Donne's Courtier's Library (if you have time, look at his Ignatius his Conclave and if you have lots of time try Caelius Curio's Pasquin in a Traunce, an anti-Catholic visit to the other world that was, I believe, well known to Donne). |
This is in the Penguin edition of Nashe. The great edition is by R.B. McKerrow, but McKerrow is available only in libraries; one of its many advantages is the retention of the original variation in typefaces.
If we do not need to catch up much, read John Donne's Ignatius his Conclave unless you have other suggestions.
A very helpful bibliography of prose Renaissance satires is Eugene P. Kirk, Menippean Satire: An Annotated Catalogue of Texts and Criticism (New York: Garland, 1980).
On such satire see also the work of Ingrid de Smet and the book by Scott Blanchard, Scholars' Bedlam: Menippean Satire in the Renaissance (Bucknell, 1995, which got its start as work for a version of this course; Blanchard has a good deal on the Italians).
If you have time, read more Lucian (there is no such thing as too much Lucian); fragments by Varro; Macrobius, Saturnalia; perhaps Aulus Gellius's Attic Nights might count as Menippean.
There are several Netherlandish Menippeans, who tended to write in so far untranslated Latin, notably Justus Lipsius (Satyra Menippaea, which I have not seen), Daniel Heinsius (Hercules, which is at Columbia), and Erycius Puteanus (Comus).
For more French, see Henri Estienne's brilliant A World of Wonders (i.e., Apologie pour Hérodote, an opinionated Protestant satire/essay/polemic), and Pierre Le Roy and others, A Satyre Menippized (a "politique" volley in the French religious wars that includes a discussion of the genre). And, of course, some texts that purport to be by Rabelais (such as Le disciple de Pantagruel, also known as Les navigations de Panurge) and that stand in so complex a relation to the "real" Rabelais that they raise significant questions about authorship/authority in the Renaissance.
For more satirical work by English writers, see Nashe on Gabriel Harvey (and, but less fun, Harvey on Nashe) and "Martin Marprelate" on what's wrong with the Church of England; a flock of satirical reports on visits to the other such as the remarkable "Newes from Heaven and Hell" on the Earl of Leicester, Tarletons Newes out of Purgatory (in which, for example, we see Ronsard tortured by having to read his verse out loud), and others by Dekker (Newes from Hell), Taylor (not a subtle writer but interestingly "popular," as is Martin Parker), and sundry revolutionaries and royalists.
Remember many English texts are not themselves exactly Menippean satire but have a satirical flavor from time to time: Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the best example. A Scot, John Barclay, wrote a Menippean satire against Loyola, Euphormio.