"A Riotous Spray of Words": Rethinking the Medieval Theory of Satire

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it will offer a brief survey of existing scholarship on the theory of satire in the Middle Ages, reviewing the studies of medieval glosses and commentaries published over the last twenty years or so. On the other, it will also try to suggest some ways in which this analysis might be further developed or expanded. Although the recent achievements of critics in this field are highly laudable, their conclusions can at times prove a little narrow in their focus. In particular, current scholarship often presents an overly homogenous and uniform view of satire commentary, neglecting a series of more marginal, even eccentric responses, which seem to identify different processes at work in the genre. The article will consider these overlooked remarks as significant aspects of medieval satire-theory in their own right: it will examine the attitude towards satire they present, and lay bare the exact functions they attribute to the literature. To begin, until comparatively recently, it was widely agreed that the Middle Ages had no knowledge of satire as a poetic form. Following John Peter's work in the 1950s, it was routinely asserted that any notion of medieval satire was an unhelpful anachronism, since 'it was not until the sixteenth century, and the conscious rediscovery of Latin Satire, that Satire reasserted itself' (12). The position that the Middle Ages 'lacked a practical, unified theory of satire' (Fahey 2) or 'kannte die Satire als Gattung nicht' ('did not know satire as a genre') appeared in several studies (Schalk 245), ranging from those by Fritz Schalk and Thomas Bestul (86), to Kathleen Fahey and Gilbert Highet (44-6). Even studies directly addressing satire in the Middle Ages were reluctant to use the term itself. More general designations were preferred, such as Douglas Gray's '"the satiric"' (21), John Yunck's 'literature of protest' (5), or James Sutherland's 'school of primitives' (23). More importantly, blame for this lack of awareness was often laid at the door of medieval exegesis. For some critics, the fact that poets had no sure grasp of satire was directly attributable to the ignorance of scholiasts (Sullivan 219; Knight 281). For instance, John Norton-Smith asserted that the absence of a clear theory of satire in commentary was responsible for deficiencies elsewhere: 'the medieval writer interested in composing satiric verse had none of the sixteenth and post-sixteenth century critical scholarship,

“Some Other Kind of Lore”: Satire and Self-Governance in Spenserian Poetry

“…A recent publication that has caused offence, advice to write something to flatter a powerful patron, epic lines tried out then broken off because unsuited to the poet's nature (or 'spirit'); Horace and Hoccleve are close enough here to lend strength to recent arguments that Roman satire was better-known to medieval writers than has been thought. 43 But in 1614 the idea that parts of The Series were based on Satires 2.1 may have been more than usually likely to present itself. 'Jonathas's theme of the control of passion already suggested one area of relevance, but if Browne read the Hoccleve and Friend of 'A Dialoge' as a medieval Horace and Trebatius, it made even more sense to use The Series as a tribute to Wither, since the issue in Horace's poem is libel.…”

The Bishops’ Ban of 1599 and the Ideology of English Satire

“…As for the social function of medieval and early Renaissance English satire, Ben Parsons has argued persuasively that, as opposed to the homogeneous view of medieval satire as ignorant of satiric theories and wholly devoted to its didactic, reformative purpose, the introductions, glosses, and commentaries from the period (the accessus ) actually suggest both an awareness of classical precedents and comfort with blending morally didactic and derisively subversive ideologies (116): ‘rather than respecting or publicizing given standards, satire is free to be wholly disparaging for the accessus . The form gains the power to mock indiscriminately, without necessarily privileging a norm as it attacks’ (112).…”