Mikhail Bakhtin wrote a book I haven’t read all of, about the literary DNA of Dostoevsky. I know about this because I read the Wikipedia page for Menippean satire, a genre of writing I’m interested both in reading and producing. instead of working from whoever’s paraphrase is offered there, I decided to read the five pages of Bakhtin’s book about the genre and craft my own paraphrases below, as guideposts.
- in the Menippea, the comical and humorous are central affects, especially when contrasted with the genre’s forebear, the Socratic dialogue.
- Menippean narratives demonstrate “extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention.” there is little concern for historical or memoiristic accuracy, nor is there respect for received myths and legends. realism is not the genre’s purview.
- as such, the fantastic and outlandish operate in the Mennipea out of devotion to philosophical interrogation: extreme, even unbelievable, situations are created so that ideas may be stretched to their limit. the fantastical plot does not embody any truth but instead provides the background against which the truth is tested. in such adventure stories or religio-mystical narratives, it is not a human character that is the locus of conflict and tension, but an idea.
- the fantastical elements intermingle with a “slum naturalism.” the idea is tested not only in supernatural extremes, but in those worldly contexts that are abject, poverty-stricken, perverse or depraved: “in brothels, in the dens of thieves, in taverns, marketplaces, prisons, in the erotic orgies of secret cults.”
- the Menippea raises ultimate philosophical questions. it is as though every situation the narrative enters into poses in miniature ethical and practical choices of fundamental importance, as though all scenarios and characters represent alternate approaches to these ultimate questions.
- a three-planed structure of the world provides wider range for addressing these ultimate questions; Menippean satire deals in the heavenly, earthly, and, especially, the netherworldly. action is often depicted at the boundaries between these spheres, as when a man argues his soul’s case at the gates of heaven, for example.
- the experimentation and fantasticality of the genre extends to nontraditional narrative points of view: observation is made from a great height, as if looking down from Olympus, or it rapidly shifts between disparate perspectives, further broadening the scope of the work.
- Menippean satire attempts to give voice to abnormal, extreme psychological states, “insanity of all sorts…, split personality, unrestrained daydreaming, unusual dreams, passions bordering on madness, suicides, and so forth.” the role these play is in introducing alternate ways of being; another life, a disjunct from the Self, a multiplicity in the place of the singular Ego. indeed, the Menippea seeks to destroy the unity of a person through dialogic interrogation, often to comic effect—even if simultaneously tragic, as in Dostoevsky’s use of doubles.
- equally characteristic as psychological disturbance are violations of etiquette and eccentricities. taboos are broken, inappropriate speeches given, scandals enacted. these play the same role insanity plays for the individual, but on a societal scale, that is, in suggesting alternate modes of being, by undermining the power of convention to determine behavior. utterances that profane the sacred, cut through pretense, or defy decency, are common.
- juxtaposition of extremes is a favored technique of the Menippean satirist: oxymorons, abrupt shifts, pairings of unlike things, the king as slave, the noble whore.
- an imagined social utopia is generally present, “in the form of dreams or journeys to unknown lands.”
- Menippean satires allow for formal promiscuity, with elements of other genres (“novellas, letters, oratorical speeches, symposia”) dispersed throughout, in varying degrees of parody.
- this formal promiscuity is evidence of the Menippea’s interest in establishing “a new relationship to the word as the material of literature,” descended from the work’s thoroughly dialogic nature.
- of primary interest to the Menippean narrative are issues contemporary with the work’s production. Menippean satires are in this way “journalistic,” by making reference to pop cultural, historical, and political events; by mapping the emergence of social developments; by depicting new directions for mundane existence.
Bakhtin notes that the genre “was formed in an epoch when national legend was already in decay, amid the destruction of those ethical norms that constituted the ancient idea of ‘seemliness’.”
