[lit-ideas] Re: Lit-Ideas: A Survey
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 21:45:29 -0600
JL:
> I think it was a British thing: Menopausean irony. Sorry, Menipean. It's the
> Scriblerius lot. Recall your seminars.
By "Scriblerius" I assume you mean Scriblerus, that irreverent lot of
Restoration writers -- Swift, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, Henry St. John and Parnell
who sat around reading their satires to one another guffawing and beating their
shrilling tankards on the table-boards imagining themselves the descendants of
Menippus whose works had already been so long ago extant that there was no one
to question them in their Menippeaness -- it's like being a refrigeration
repairman -- who's to second-guess you except another guy who claims that he's
a refrigeration repairman? We and the Scriblerians are safer than brain
surgeons from being found out.
You tell me to recall my seminars. I tell you to recall that I have retired
from recalling anything. On the seventh day, God grew tired and said: "Let us
sit." And there was sitting-when-tired and he called it satire. And God saw
that it was funny.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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