[lit-ideas] The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 00:20:32 EST
In a message dated 3/3/2009 10:45:48 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
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 --
----
Exactly. Thing is, we never gave him a chance to display his wit (or wisdom)
and now his gone. He could even have said it in French, now I would have
condescend.
It's worse with Peter D. Junger because he argued with me and now he's dead
and I feel guilty and I feel sorry that the obituary reads -- the first of
the kind I read -- that he was survived by his mother Genevieve and I find it a
bit spooky that his blog is still there and he was a Harvard man and he
travelled to see his mother for Thanksgiving Day and someone should collect all
his posts to this thing and provide a link and one wonders the cause of his
death and there is an entry for him in wiki and the blog says that he was found
a cancer cell on his forehead and when was it that the list found that he was
dead it could have been weeks before anyone did and then they say there was
another who passed and there you are frivolous talking about god telling you
to sit (where? the question is where?) whereas we should be giving the
thanksigiving and the collections on their memory.
With Lefleur is different because he is possibly still traceable within the
land of the living (so-called).
Geary, enjoy all these quotes below. And you still think it was "perhaps a
Greek or Roman guy????" as you irreverently put it "every post he would name
him". He was trying to educate us and looking for feedback. Do you think people
do these things for silly? And the role of a moderator is precisely that: to
encourage good writers, and provide feedback and love us.
And comment on the most relevant ones.
A member of the Scriblerus Club formed c 1713 by Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and
others, who produced the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (publ. 1741) in
order to ridicule lack of taste in learning. Also as adj.
1935 L. M. BEATTIE John Arbuthnot iv. 271 Swift's experience as a
Scriblerian must have affected the turn given to numerous observations in
Gulliver.
Ibid. 276 In its humor for humor's sake it is typically Scriblerian. 1950 C.
KERBY-MILLER Mem. Martinus Scriblerus 1 The activities which may be labeled
Scriblerian spanned a period of almost three decades. Ibid. 31 The
Scriblerians
began collecting material of all sorts. 1969 P. KÖSTER in Philol. Q. Apr. 207
Although the subtlety of this satiric segment may have been caviare to all
but the refined taste of Arbuthnot's fellow Scriblerians, the ‘String of
Epithets’ could not be ignored by any but the grossest ear. 1977 in R. A.
Wisbey
Computer in Literary & Linguistic Res. IV. 133 Unfortunately.., there are no
examples of Scriblerian collaboration in which the shares of Arbuthnot and
Swift are already known.
[< the name of Menippus of Gardara (see MENIPPEAN adj.) + -IZED suffix.
The French word used in the passages translated in the quots. is Menippee:
see MENIPPEAN adj.] Having a Menippean style.
1595 T. W. tr. P. Le Roy et al. Pleasant Satyre sig. A2 (heading) A satyre
menippized, that is to say, a Poesie, sharplie, yet Philosophicallie and wisely
rebuking vices without regard of persons. Touching the vertue of the
Catholicon of Spayne. 1595 T. W. tr. P. Le Roy et al. Pleasant Satyre 203 As
concerning the adiectiue Menippized..it is more then sixteene hundred yeares
agoe,
that Varro..made Satyres of this name also, which Macrobius sayth were called
Cyniquized, and Menippized.
[< classical Latin Menippus (< the name of Menippus (Greek ) of Gadara (fl.
3rd cent. B.C.), Greek writer and philosopher of the Cynic school + -us:
compare -EOUS suffix) + -AN suffix; compare -EAN suffix. Compare Middle French
Menippee, French ménippée (see note).
A French pamphlet of 1593, Satyre Menippee de la Vertv dv Catholicon
d'Espagne, was widely read, and went through several editions; however, the
English
translation which was printed in London in 1595 uses MENIPPIZED adj. rather
than Menippean to render the French word.]
Characteristic of, exhibiting, or resembling the style of satirical
writing associated with Menippus, esp. in the use of parody or burlesque and
the
mixture of different styles or genres. Usu. in Menippean satire.
The works of Menippus himself are lost, but his style was imitated by the
1st-century B.C. Roman writer Varro (see VARRONIAN adj.), whose Saturae
Menippeae themselves gave rise to many imitations.
1693 DRYDEN tr. Juvenal Satires Ded. p. xxvii, 'Tis that which we call the
Varronian Satire, but which Varro himself calls the Menippean. 1728 E. CHAMBERS
Cycl. (at cited word), Menippean, or Satyra Menippea. It is thus call'd from
Menippas, a Cynic Philosopher, who delighted in composing Satyrical Letters,
&c. 1797 Encycl. Brit. XI. 388/1 Menippean,..a kind of satire consisting of
prose and verse intermixed. It is thus called from Menippus a cynic
philosopher. 1813 Pantologia at Menippus, He wrote some snarlish satires, for
which
reason writings of that stamp have been sometimes called Menippean. 1878
Princeton Rev. Jan.-June 638 A whole line of satirical spirits who attack the
same
enemyauthors of Menippean satire, Molière with his ‘Tartuffe,’ and many
others. 1908 W. P. DICKSON tr. T. Mommsen Hist. Rome V. 488 It resulted both
from
the nature of the Cynical philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that
the Menippean lash was very specially plied round the ears of the
philosophers. 1976 M. MCLUHAN Let. 3 Feb. (1987) 517 Most of my writing is
Menippean
satire, presenting the actual surface of the world we live in as a ludicrous
image. 1985 Rev. Eng. Stud. Feb. 131 The book is enlivening because of the
consciously unstuffy ‘menippean’ quality in its ‘clashes of genre and changes
of
tone’.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
on the River Plate, South America
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