Menippean Satire

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Though I'm sure that plenty of you already know this,
I thought it wouldn't hurt to seek out the basics.


Starting from the rather broad use of the term "Menippean" 
in Bakhtin and Frye, Relihan seeks to narrow in on a small 
number of texts that share a core of traits derived from an 
aesthetic of indecorous mixing of incongruous elements: 
verse and prose, high and low styles, serious and comic, 
the moral and the erotic, etc. Of greatest importance for the 
definition of the genre, according to Relihan, is that these 
strange brews are offered to the reader by an incompetent 
narrator who is himself parodied, along with his quest for 
philosophical knowledge. This kind of mise-en-abime is 
perhaps most familiar from the Satyricon, where the reader 
is often in doubt how something is to be taken, but Relihan 
argues that this is a central characteristic of each of the texts 
he studies. . . .

. . . . But the radical uncertainty surrounding Menippean 
satires due to the self-parodying frame, the lack of coherent 
presentation, and the mixture of incongruous elements, 
means that they will provoke interpretations and effects that 
escape the control of the author and his intentions. This is 
the aspect that Bakhtin foregrounds and the choice of such 
a framework by an author means yielding up any hope of 
being "properly" read; so, conservative as these works may 
be, they are also mischievous and imbued with the knowledge 
that language and meaning are slippery and unreliable.


Joel C. Relihan, Ancient Menippean Satire. Baltimore: 
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. xv + 306. 
ISBN 0-8018-4524-6.

Reviewed by Stephen A. Nimis, Miami University of Ohio.


The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter -
The Dinner of Trimalcho, chapter 78

It was not long before Stychus brought a white shroud and a 
purple-bordered toga into the dining-room, and Trimalchio 
requested us to feel them and see if they were pure wool. 
Then, with a smile, "Take care, Stychus, that the mice don't 
get at these things and gnaw them, or the moths either. I'll 
burn you alive if they do. I want to be carried out in all my 
glory so all the people will wish me well." Then, opening a 
jar of nard, he had us all anointed. "I hope I'll enjoy this as 
well when I'm dead," he remarked, "as I do while I'm alive." 
He then ordered wine to be poured into the punch-bowl. 
"Pretend," said he, "that you're invited to my funeral feast." 
The thing had grown positively nauseating, when Trimalchio, 
beastly drunk by now, bethought himself of a new and singular 
diversion and ordered some horn- blowers brought into the 
dining-room. Then, propped up by many cushions, he stretched 
himself out upon the couch. "Let on that I'm dead," said he, "and 
say something nice about me." The horn-blowers sounded off a 
loud funeral march together,and one in particular, a slave 
belonging to an undertaker, made such a fanfare that he roused 
the whole neighborhood, and the watch, which was patrolling the 
vicinity, thinking Trimalchio's house was afire, suddenly smashed 
in the door and rushed in with their water and axes, as is their right, 
raising a rumpus all their own. We availed ourselves of this happy 
circumstance and, leaving Agamemnon in the lurch, we took 
to our heels, as though we were running away from 
a real conflagration.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_satyricon2_78.htm