Talk:Menippean satire
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[edit] "Or" or "And"?
Should this sentence:
Contemporary scholars including Frye classify Swift's A Tale of a Tub or Gulliver's Travels, Thomas Carlysle's Sartor Resartus, François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel or Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland or O'Briens The Third Policeman as Menippean satires.
Say:
Contemporary scholars including Frye classify Swift's A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels, Thomas Carlysle's Sartor Resartus, François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and O'Briens The Third Policeman as Menippean satires.
?
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.41.254.110 (talk) 03:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
This article needs to be revised by someone who knows what it's trying to say, and can come right out and say it, rather than making arch, cryptic comments like "which we may call a novel with some sense of unease." -- Antaeus Feldspar 14:02, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
- Just delete it entirely if it's not to your personal taste. The line merely suggests that there might be some question whether the book is genuinely a "novel" and that the definition of "novel" might be reconsidered by the thoughtful reader. To say all that explicitly would derail the train of thought. And to say it explicitly might seem to be "thoughtful", therefore "original" —and you know where that leads... So delete it, and don't puzzle over it, if it offends you. --Wetman 23:32, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
So much of this article seems like a paean to Frye. I'd like to cut a lot of it, or at least move it into a subcategory, especially since it seems to draw too much on later impressions of Menippean satire which do not fit the Classical form. Existent80 July 6, 2005 23:53 (UTC)
- When someone says of any article "I'd like to cut a lot of it"— well, that does seem disarmingly honest. Perhaps this contributor will reconsider, however, and make some thoughtful additions instead, based on his reading. Since Northrop Frye's major book offers some structural definitions of genres and how they work, Anatomy of Criticism itself might make a good start. Any further References to add to the article? Something to balance the unseemly weight of Frye? --Wetman 7 July 2005 00:26 (UTC)
I disagree, I see exactly what the author tries to say - after all, he is defining an abstract term with a widely encompassing definition (after all, there aren't too many books that can be classified as a Menippean satire with complete confidence). Moreover, the author's lively and creative tone makes this article engaging and interesting.
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I find the history (if it is properly arranged) to be quite interesting and informative. Again, conditioned on it being verifiable, I believe that it should stay. However, the lack of a clear and forthright definition ab initio is extremely damaging to the usefulness of the article. Why not simply adopt the STANDARD definition which is endorsed by and large by most within the community: "a form of satire which involves a mixture of verse and prose". To elaborate is splendid -- to elaborate without a more straightforward 'baseline' definition is asiatic and off-putting.
- I tend to agree with the unsigned comment above. In older (i.e., pre-Frye) usage, "Menippean satire" frequently simply meant "prosimetrum". The introduction in the Loeb edition of Boethius's Consolation calls the work a Menippean satire, and C. S. Lewis, among other critics, used the term in the same way. Someone coming to the article after encountering such a usage is bound to be confused by the text as it stands. Deor 15:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
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I can say with 100% certainty there is no such person as Thomas Kharpertian. Considering that Theodore is my father.
[edit] Commedia dell'arte
Does anyone know whether there is any explicit connection between Menippean satire and Commedia dell'arte? The line "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" piqued my interest. -- 201.51.211.130 20:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
