Pasquinade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pasquinade refers to an anonymous lampoon, whether in verse or in prose. Pasquin (Italian Pasquino) was the name ordinary Romans gave to a battered ancient statue dug up in the course of paving the Parione district and erected at the corner of Piazza di Pasquino and Palazzo Braschi, on the west side of Piazza Navona in 1501, by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who inadvertently gave the statue its first voice, by originating an annual ceremony, the first in 1501, for Saint Mark's Day, April 25. The marble torso was draped in a toga and epigrams in Latin were attached to it. The decorous event quickly got out of hand when it became the custom for those who wanted to criticize the Pope or individuals in his government—for a pasquinade is first and foremost a personal attack— to write satirical poems in broad Roman dialect (called "pasquinades" from the Italian "pasquinate") and attach them to this statue.

Thus Pasquino became the first talking statue of Rome.^[1] He spoke out about the people's dissatisfaction, he denounced injustice, and he assaulted misgovernment by members of the Church. Before long, other statues appeared on the scene, forming a kind of public salon or academy, the "Congress of the Wits" (Congresso degli Arguti), with Pasquino always the leader, and the sculptures that Romans called Marforio, Abate Luigi, il Facchino, Madamma Lucrezia, and Babuino (the "Baboon") as his outspoken colleagues. At various times, these poems were collected and published and thus became well known all over Europe.

The lampooning tradition was ancient among Romans. For a first century versified lampoon, see Domus Aurea.

Pasquinade is sometimes misidentified, appearing among synonyms of parody at WordNet. Compare also the equally unrelated pastiche.

Pasquin is the name of a play by Henry Fielding from 1736. It was a pasquinade in that it was an explicit and personalized attack on Robert Walpole and his supporters. It is one of the plays that triggered the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737.

The Pasquinade is a small, grassroots magazine of parody and satire started in the mid-90s. The brainchild of Dallas Shelby, a college journalism student with a bent for satire and a love of pop culture, the publication featured everything from Jocelyn Elders' first post-DC interview to a review of the misunderstood horror film "The John Wayne Bobbitt Story." In 1999, the Pasquinade cut its print production, focusing on its website http://www.thepasquinade.com. In 2003, the organization developed its own film production company, Pasquinade Films.

[edit] Notes

^ The actual identification of the subject was made in the eighteenth century by the antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti, who identified it as the torso of Menelaus supporting the dying Patroclus, more recently characterized as a Hellenistic sculpture of the third century BCE, or a Roman copy.