Medieval parody and satire

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From Winston Black in The Medieval Review 15.06.24...

'In the concluding essay, "The Bright Side of the Knife: Dismemberment in Medieval Europe and the Modern Imagination," Lila Yawn clearly takes the most chances and has the most fun in exploring the topic of medieval wounds and wounding. After a review of graphic and supposedly "medieval" dismemberments in modern movies and literature, such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, or Pulp Fiction, Yawn poses the simple question of "how medieval cutting up living bodies really was" (218). In response, she gives a whirlwind tour of nearly two millennia of images and descriptions of amputation, dismemberment, fragmentation, and mutilation from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson. In so doing she demonstrates, as many medieval apologists have already noted, that there is no greater amount or degree of dismemberment in the Middle Ages than before or after, but what leads moderns to equate "medieval" with "dismemberment" is the medieval tendency to celebrate dismemberment and put severed body parts on display, be they of the criminal or of the saint.'

The Medieval Review 15.06.24
Kirkham, Anne, and Cordelia Warr, eds. Wounds in the Middle Ages. The History of Medicine in Context. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014. pp. xvi, 254. $124.95 (hardback). ISBN: 9781409465690 (hardback).
Reviewed by: Winston Black, Assumption College. black@assumption.edu
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/19219/25339

"La muerte del conde de Niebla en El Laberinto de Fortuna de Juan de Mena" y el poema atribuído a Juan de Hempudia en Carajicomedia, abordan el tema de la guerra, uno de los más frecuentes de la literatura de ficción. Aún así, las descripciones de combates en la poesía medieval y renacentista apenas han despertado interés entre los estudiosos que las han examinado. Su contribución para este volumen contrasta tres textos en que la guerra es materia descriptiva: la sección de El Laberinto de Fortuna que Juan de Mena dedica al conde de Niebla, que asalta y muere ahogado ante el castillo de Gibraltar, con su parodia en el segundo poema de la Carajicomedia, pasando por la descripción que hace el marqués de Santillana de la desastrosa batalla naval en que cae prisionero Alfonso V de Aragón en su Comedieta de Ponza. Estos autores conocían bien la retórica y los lugares comunes que tienden a aparecer en las descripciones de batalla, y que han sido estudiados por Ernst Robert Curtius, pero sus obras se aproximan al conflicto armado a través de ópticas totalmente diferentes. Mena se sirve de ellos para aleccionar, Santillana para alabar a los castellanos y la Carajicomedia para burlarse de alguien que no se identifica excepto con el nombre de Diego Fajardo.

This essay takes into consideration some of the literary intertexts of the medieval fairy tale-like poem 'Asinarius' in order to arrive at a comic-parodic reading. Among these are Simon Aurea Capra's 'Ylias', Vergil's 'Aeneid', Nigel of Longchamp's 'Speculum stultorum'', as well as a series of textual and iconographic variations on the proverbial theme of the 'ass and the lyre'.

Made famous in a 1995 article in GLQ by Boyd and Karras, the case of John Rykener, recorded in the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London has been, with some justification, understood as a rare and remarkable window onto gender and sexuality at the end of the fourteenth century. The cross-dressing male prostitute has generated a lot of interest both on the part of scholars and students, but to date the historicity of the account that purports to record the business of mayor's court has not really been explored. This is despite the obvious oddities of the record: there are no clear charges stated, no outcome recorded, and much of the detail of the case relates to events located outside the jurisdiction of the City of London and hence the mayor's court. This present article is an attempt to grapple with these problems. It explores all aspects of the recorded narrative. The timing is seen as particularly interesting in relation to London's troubled dealings with the crown. In analysing the names and places discussed, numbers of references to the court of Richard II are thrown up. These are then built upon to suggest an alternative reading of the narrative that sees it not as the record of an actual case, but an exercise in biting political satire. (Published 2016 for the 2014 issue.)

This essay argues Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls - in addition to being a dream-vision - belongs to both the beast epic tradition and beast fable genre, because of the satirical animal allegory in the bird parliament episode, which incorporates a moral lesson. It was written for a second year BA proficiency course on academic writing.

Although it has been an almost ubiquitous discourse from ancient times to the present, satirists and critics do not agree on a single definition of satire. A synthetic definition of satire could be reached through a critical survey of its various definitions. Accordingly, satire is a discursive practice in a Foucauldian sense to which four elements, with varying degrees, are essential: attack or aggression, laughter or humor, play, and judgment. Defining satire as a Foucauldian discourse allows the critical analysis of its interactions with other discourses within respective power structures. Therefore, a general discursive model of satire is deduced according to which the discourse of satire not only shapes, but is also shaped by, five major discourses—namely discourses of economy, politics, morality, patriarchy, as well as learning and knowledge—through their negotiations and transactions within specific epistemes.

Lilith understood as the first wife of Adam, the mother of evil spirits and the nocturnal demon particularly fond of men and newborns belongs to the mythical tradition derived from the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira. The latter is a cryptic yet ribald composition and as such defines the hermeneutic framework for the interpretation of the Lilith-myth contained therein. The present study has therefore two basic purposes. First, to offer the critical translation and commentary of the Lilith-myth present in the Alphabet of Ben Sira. Second, to define the roles this myth might have played in its cultural context.

This article examines the reception history of parodies of the Talmud written for Purim. Since the twelfth century, as far as we know from the surviving witness, parodic literature has been one of the main literary expressions for the celebration of Purim. The most distinctive examples for this genre are parodies of the Talmud, most prominently Kalonymos ben Kalonymos’ Massekhet Purim and Gersonides’ Megillat Setarim, both written in the early decades of the fourteenth century. This article will demonstrate how the reception history of parodic literature for Purim portrays almost an opposite picture to the common perception of transmission and reception of pre-modern non-canonical texts in the Jewish world. Unlike other non-canonical texts, the medieval Purim parodies were copied and printed for over 400 years in the same way - without changes in their contents or their comical elements. Moreover, in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, these parodies inspired new parodic pieces that copied the same comical characteristics, originally written hundreds of years earlier, almost without referring to the time and place in in which they were written.

This article focuses on Kalonymos ben Kalonymos’ humoristic Midrash on the Book of Esther, which appears in the Purim parody Massekhet Purim (PurimTractate), written in Rome between 1324 and 1328. In Kalonymos’ parodic Midrash, Haman is portrayed as a Rabbinic scholar who was banished from the Beth Midrash after having found out he was a descendant of Amalek. In this version, Haman was abused by all the characters in the Megillah, especially by Mordecai. At the end of the Midrash, Haman is persecuted by Ahasuerus based on false testimony. Based on the examination of this yet understudied source, the article suggests connecting the surprising revision of the figures in the Megillah by Kalonymos ben Kalonymos to non-textual traditions that refer to the story of the Book of Esther, primarily the customs of hitting Haman and erasing his name during the Middle Ages.

Abstract: This paper examines two sexual myths, the droit du seigneur and the chastity belt. Through medieval Hispanic documentation, values and customs of those societies, it is denied their existence but shows that already existed in the Middle Ages as myths. The droit de seigneur was part of political rumours used against the feudal lords. The chastity belt was also used as a political weapon but it was more like satirical element against jealous husbands. This allows us to rehabilitate the public image of the Middle Ages, without forget their shadows, to no longer used as justification that we live in the best of all possible worlds, without regard to the most recent past or our inheritance.
Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es arrojar luz sobre dos mitos sexuales, el derecho de pernada y el cinturón de castidad. A través de documentación hispana medieval, de los valores y costumbres de aquellas sociedades, no sólo niega su existencia, sino que demuestra que como mitos ya existían en la Edad Media. El derecho de pernada formaba parte de los rumores políticos que se levantaban contra los señores feudales, al igual que llegó a ocurrir con el cinturón de castidad, aunque más que usarse para motivos políticos era un elemento satírico contra maridos celosos. Esta labor nos permite rehabilitar la imagen pública de la Edad Media, pero sin olvidar sus sombras, para que no se use como justificación de que vivimos en el mejor de los mundos posibles, sin atender al pasado más reciente o a nuestras herencias.

Abstract: The Even Bohan of Qalonymos ben Qalonymos has long been acknowledged as a masterpiece of Hebrew satire and an important source for Jewish life in medieval Aragon, provence, and Italy. The date of its composition, however, has been the subject of persistent confusion. For over four centuries its completion was dated decades before the birth of its author, even though the correct date had been discovered by Joseph Scaliger and (independently) by Leopold Zunz. After an overview of Qalonymos's world and works, this essay uncovers this history by tracing the fate of one word through textual transmission from manuscript to print. Studying past attempts to date Qalonymos's text, this essay tells chapters in the histories of the Hebrew book and the perception of medieval Jewish history by both Renaissance christian hebraists and nineteenth-century scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. It also provides the correct date of the completion of the Even Bohan.

The text of this current translation comes from Samuel Krauss’ 1902 collection of manuscript transcriptions—originally found in Cod. Heb. 54 of the Vienna Israelite Theological Library, but denominated by Krauss as “Ms. Vindobona,” after the Latin name for Vienna. The manuscript was allegedly stolen from the Institute’s library by the Nazis, and subsequently disappeared—possibly being either destroyed or looted during the bombing of Berlin. The truth of this lost manuscript may never be known, but a few things are clear: despite its sometimes disturbing content, the text is a paradox, both vulgarly base and eloquently beautiful, epic satire, tragically antiheroic, and altogether exceptional literature worthy of appreciation by the humanities.

Based on:
Krauss, Samuel, ed. Das Leben Jesu: Nach Judischen Quellen. Berlin: S. Calvary,
1902.

This is a revised and corrected version that supersedes the one published in Iran after the Mongols. Ed. by S. Babaie. The Idea of Iran 8. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2019, pp. 235-269. In the published version, mistakes in numbering footnotes were inadvertently introduced in the editorial process, which are here rectified.

Around the year 1410, Heinrich Wittenwiler, an advocate to the bishop of Constance, wrote a novel in verses, called "Der Ring". Wittenwilers parodistic tale of the wealthy farmer Bertschi Triefnas and his unpleasant bride Mätzli Rüerenzumph is considered a key work of the late middle Ages. Its comic plot is bursting with references to contemporary events and to the moral and theological knowledge of the time. Wittenwiler tells the story of a world turned upside down, when a marriage feast in the countryside turns into a deadly war. His aim is to teach noblemen living near Lake of Constance about a morally decent way of life and the perpetuation of the social order in politically difficult times.

– Um 1410 verfasste Heinrich Wittenwiler, Advokat des Bischofs von Konstanz, einen Versroman, den er "Der Ring" nannte. In der Erzählung, die als eines der «Haupt- und Schlüsselwerke» des Spätmittelalters gilt, schilderte er parodistisch überhöht die Hochzeit des reichen Bauern Bertschi Triefnas und seiner hässlichen Braut Mätzli Rüerenzumph. Die komische Handlung strotzt von Bezügen zu zeitgenössischen Ereignissen und zum moralisch-theologischen Wissen des Spätmittelalters. Der Autor hoffte, in politisch schwierigen Zeiten dem Adel am Bodensee Lehren über die richtige Lebensführung und den Erhalt der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung zu vermitteln.

A partire dai riscontri tra il diciannovesimo dell’Inferno e la Bibbia, Rachel Jacoff, Mirko Tavoni e Zygmunt Barański hanno mostrato come il canto dei simoniaci segni l’investitura di Dante a profeta. Il presente studio sostiene l’ipotesi che il canto segni allo stesso tempo e con la stessa enfasi l’investitura di Dante a satiro. I paramenti e il lessico di questa seconda investitura sono mutuati dalla dottrina retorica medievale e, in particolare, dalla tradizione esegetica che accompagna i testi di Persio, Giovenale e Orazio (vitae, accessus, glossae).

This paper. written in 1989 before the completion of my PhD thesis, discusses the image of two religious orders at a crucial point in their history, as revealed by a contemporary satire. 'Renart le Nouvel' both endorses the evidence of chronicles and documents and throws into relief aspects which might otherwise be dismissed. It presents a detailed and critical picture of the two most important military orders, the order of the Temple and the Hospital of St. John, at a critical point in their history, that is, shortly before the loss of Acre in 1291.

This article discusses the Byzantine understanding of " satire " and " invective ". It argues that it is unwise to impose modern expectations and definitions on what we call Byzantine satire. It also shows that to find a clear-cut definition is simply impossible since Byzantine satire and invective are often interwoven and inseparable. Therefore, the main focus of the paper is on finding a theoretical framework for Byzantine satire and invective which is rooted in Byzantine writings rather than in modern definitions. There does not seem to be one designation which could be used as an " umbrella term " for Byzantine satirical production. Satire could be seen rather as a set of rhetorical strategies regulating tone, making satire more a mode than a firmly defined genre.

In 1965 Mikhail Bachtin published his thesis on François Rabelais and his world. Bachtin theorised that the church was devoid of humour and that the common people participated in a special type of humour, which stood in opposition to the established societal power-spheres. This type of humour was best demonstrated in the celebrations collectively known as Carnival and contained a strong scatological and absurd narrative, by Bachtin known as grotesque realism. This paper investigates this claim and shows that medieval humour was more than just Rabelais and scatological satire. Collecting sources never seen in relation to each other, it is illustrated, that medieval humour was as diverse as early modern sarcasm and they connect in a mutually shared pan European identity, strongly associated with the Roman Catholic Church.

Which animals – real or imaginary – helped construct the power
of the Popes over the centuries? And during the Middle Ages,
the Protestant Reformation or in more recent years, which animals
inspired polemics and satire about the papacy?
Several animals of the papacy are part of our collective memory (the dove, the eagle, the lion). Many others have been forgotten, and yet parrots and peacocks, phoenixes and griffins, leopards and elephants have accompanied the papacy for very long periods of time.
This historical reconstruction is based on a first-hand reinterpretation of a wealth of
textual and iconographic sources. Each chapter follows the historical pathway of one of the various animals, from its very first mention (the 3rd century for the dove, the 6th for the horse, the 11th for the parrot) until its symbolic decline, or tracing its survival to the present day.
These stories of animals are an observatory – fascinating but also incisive –illustrating
how the papacy constructed its power, and the efforts of people to inspire its reform or
make it an object of derision.


«Dal 13 marzo 2013 siede sull’antica cattedra di Pietro un pontefice che,
primo nella storia, ha scelto il nome di Francesco, il santo che ancora oggi tutti associano all’amore nei confronti dell’ancor piú antico miracolo
della natura creata e dei suoi animali. Certo, i tempi cambiano, e l’enciclica Laudato si’ del 2015 è stata debitamente definita “ecologista” dai media per le novità che contiene. Ma in realtà, papa Francesco si riallaccia a una tradizione, tanto remota quanto ininterrotta, che associa animali e pontefici in un rapporto simbolico e metaforico di stupefacente coerenza, pur nell’estrema varietà dei messaggi. Una storia, anzi un insieme di storie per narrare le quali nessuno strumento ci è parso altrettanto opportuno della piú veneranda delle enciclopedie: un bestiario. Nel corso delle pagine che seguiranno, cercheremo di costruirne uno assai particolare, popolato di colombe, draghi, cavalli, asini e cammelli, pappagalli, fenici e pavoni, aquile, leoni, leopardi, corna di ceraste e corni di unicorni, oltre che di orsi ed elefanti, allo scopo di comprendere in qual modo tutti questi animali abbiano contribuito a creare e poi accompagnato – talvolta senza soluzione di continuità e per molti secoli – l’autoaffermazione simbolica del papato nel suo divenire storico e istituzionale; oppure, al contrario, siano stati usati per criticare o delegittimare il pontefice e la Chiesa».

[‘Profeta e satiro. A proposito di Inferno XIX’, Dante Studies 133 (2015): 27-45, translation from the Italian] Starting from textual comparisons between the nineteenth canto of Inferno and the Bible, Rachel Jacoff, Mirko Tavoni and Zygmunt Barański have shown how the canto of the simonists marks the investiture of Dante as prophet. The present study takes the hypothesis that, at the same time and with the same emphasis, it also marks the investiture of Dante as satirist.

BBC's "Detectorists" concerns itself with the (seemingly) most ludicrously mundane of all possible human activities – metal detecting. And we are, at first, eased into its comic mundaneness with little hint of any metaphysical reverberation beyond a nice chuckle in our British-cringe-comedy receptor cells.
We see two " no-hopers " – apparently falling well short of the required post-millennial human task of " getting a Life " – out in a beautiful, ornithologically-ringing English field, crouching astride new-furrowed ground with furrowed brows – praying for the find of all time.
The serene birdsong is occasionally punctured by a long beep from one of their meticulously maintained metal detecting devices, and there follows a sweet moment of suspended pessimism, where hope rules the waves. At first, it seems that this little chuckle at the pettiness and small-mindedness of the endeavor will become the same joke, week after week – and that the highpoint of each episode will be the correcting of someone uninitiated to the cause who has mistakenly referred to one of these treasure-hunters as a " metal detector " being sternly rebuked with an "-ist! ". Petty-mindedness is always funny (unless it is our own) and the British depict it unfailingly – ever-increasingly since its virtuosic displays by grand master Fawlty.

But there is much, much more to behold in Detectorists.
As the seasonal developments of the characters and their interrelationships are revealed, a quietly unfurling philosophy of Life begins to take a foothold . . .