According to late antique and medieval grammarians, satire is a literary genre modelled upon the writings of Juvenal, Persius and Horace.4 In order to summarise its formal features, grammarians often refer to the false etymology from ‘satyr’, the god of the forest.5 This etymological explanation enjoyed great popularity in medieval schools; it offers a poignant visual epitome of the main stylistic qualities of satirical writing.
Satire, grammarians explain, is ‘saltans’ [leaping] like a satyr, for it does not have a specific topic or target. In other words, the satirist must not spare anyone, whether rich or poor, priest or professor, king or peasant.
The image of the caprine satyr gives visual representation to the typical
‘filthiness’ of satire’s vocabulary, the obscenity of its lexicon and the vulgarity of its prosody. Another attribute that satire shares with satyrs is its ‘nuditas’ [nakedness]; there are no pretences or cover ups, satirists do not beat around the bush but rather go straight to the point. They use a ‘rustica’
[rustic], simple syntax, a mode of speaking that derives from the language of rural rampages.6 Finally, satire is ‘derisoria’ [offensive]. Like the giggly,
4 On medieval theory of satire see Ben Parsons, ‘“A Riotous Spray of Words”: Rethinking the Medieval Theory of Satire’, Exemplaria 21 (2009), 105–28; and Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja, ‘Il quarto del Convivio. O della satira’, Le Tre Corone 1 (2014), 27–53 (pp. 28–38).
5 One of the principal sources of the satire-satyr connection is Diomedes’s Ars Grammatica III: ‘Satura dicitur carmen apud Romanos nunc quidem maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia archaeae comediae charactere compositum, quale scripserunt Lucilius et Horatius et Persius […]. Satura autem dicta sive a Satyris, quod similiter in hoc carmine ridiculae res pudendaeque dicuntur, quae velut a Satyris proferuntur et fiunt […]’
[Satire is the name of a verse composition amongst the Romans. At present certainly it is defamatory and composed to carp at human vices in the manner of the Old Comedy;
this type of satura was written by Lucilius, Horace, and Persius […]. Satura takes its name either from saturs, because in this verse form comical and shameless things are said which are produced and made as if by satyrs]. For other examples see the collection of texts published by Suzanne Reynolds, ‘Dante and the Medieval Theory of Satire: A Collection of Texts’, in Libri poetarum in quattuor species dividuntur, ed. by Zygmunt G.
Barański, supplement to The Italianist 15 (1995), 145–57.
6 See Horace, Ars Poetica, pp. 203–50. And Guillaume de Conches notes: ‘Potest et satira dici a satiris, id est ab agrestibus dicta est […] agrestes cuiuscumque patrie conveniebant in honore Cereris et Bachi […]. Deinde sibi indulgendo, commedendo, et bibendo magnam partem diei consumebant. Ad ultimum, rustici unius ville contra rusticos alterius ville consurgebant et in vicem fundebant convicia non bene consona pro discretione rusticana. Et huius modi convicia predicta sunt satire, id est agrestes callidiores autem in
unpredictable half-men, satirists ridicule their enemies, wounding them with their ‘sharp tongue’, biting with their mordant remarks.
These colourful features can be reorganised into five scholastic categories: intentio, modus scribendi, stylus, causa materialis and materia tractandi. The intentio of satirical writings is to wound, lacerate, hurt. The modus scribendi — the way in which these words are written — is bare, straightforward, unadorned.7 The stylus of the syntax is simple, quotidian and ordinary; the vocabulary is vulgar, filthy, obscene. What satirical works also have in common is the so-called causa materialis, the motive behind the decision of writing a piece in the satirical style. That which provokes the writer to burst into a satirical attack is very often identified by the fact that the world where the satirist lives appears to be turned upside down.
A profound injustice allows the evil to trample on the good, whereas the just are exiled, mistreated, isolated. Another recurrent theme of the satirical tradition is the ‘materia tractandi’ [subject matter]. The favourite target of satirists throughout the ages is the accumulation of riches, more often than not leading to the bartering of spiritual values for material possessions.
Of these five predicaments, the rhetorical category of intentio deserves special attention because medievalists, including Dante scholars, have largely failed to account for its normative implications. Intentio is not the author’s intention — which is generally referred to as causa finalis (e.g. to entertain, to moralise, to dishonour, etc). In contrast to the variable nature of the author’s intention, the intentio is a quality intrinsic to a given language and cannot be altered: it is like conductivity for materials. The intentio of satire, as mentioned, is to hurt and offend. This point is striking mainly because no other literary genre possesses this particular trait. Satire has a dark heart: it is a language entangled with violence and as such, unlike other
artem redigerunt et metrice ceperunt reprehendere’ [It is possible that ‘satire’ is derived from ‘satiri’, that is from ‘peasants’ […] peasants, they used to assemble for the honour of Ceres and Bacchus […] In these occasions they would give free reign to their appetites, celebrating and drinking, feasting for the greater part of the day. At the end of such gatherings, the rustics of one village would stand against those of another settlement, and by turns they poured out abuse, chiming together in ungainly fashion, as harsh and rough as befits the peasantry. And these types of outbursts anticipated satire, because the craftiest farmers, those with most skill and artistry, later fashioned verse intended to reprehend’]. Guillaume de Conches, Glosae in Iuvenalem, ed. by Bradford Wilson (Paris:
Vrin, 1980), p. 91.
7 See medieval annotations on Horace, Ars Poetica, pp. 234–35: ‘Non ego inornata et dominantia nomina solum / verbaque, Pisones, Satyrorum scriptor amabo’ [As a writer of [a new] satire, oh Pisos, I shall never be fond of unornamented words and verbs of established use].
languages, it requires containment. From late antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, scholiasts and commentators have worked towards a definition of the genre that includes forms of control and inhibition. The marginalia of medieval manuscripts containing poems of Persius, Juvenal and Horace, are fraught with anonymous glosses indicating ways to justify and embank the flood of rage, to make it morally acceptable.8 I would divide these popular solutions into three groups.
One way of justifying the use of satire follows the Aristotelian principle of moderation. ‘Vituperatio et laudatio’ or ‘reprehensione vitii et commendatione virtutis’: any harsh rebuke must be followed and tempered by a praise of the good aspects.9 Another way is to prevent the use of satirical language against specific historical individuals. Satire can be practiced as long as its target is left unnamed or consists in a generic category of persons. It is the well-known motto: hate the sin not the sinner. The third and most popular way of justifying satirical violence is to introduce a moral finality. Hitting and hurting is permitted as a way of correcting ['ut corrigat']. Satirists shout and insult their targets in order to push them away from their bad habits and wrong behaviours.
That satirical language can potentially be used for ethical purposes does not mean that satire is per se an ethical genre. In satirical writings, the moral finality is accessory, a rhetorical device aimed at defusing what the civic body sees as a form of mutual violence. Satire is the expression of a feral and wild spirit:
Certe novimus Lucilium in urbe Roma satyrographum ita invectum in vitia, ut videretur non mores carpsisse, sed homines necasse et vulnerasse.10 [We read of the satirist Lucilius who in the city of Rome was so carried away against vices that he would wound and kill people rather than carping at their habits.]
8 This material is still largely unpublished; for bibliographical references on Giovenale, see Stefano Grazzini, ‘Leggere Giovenale nell’alto Medioevo’, in Trasmissione del testo dal Medioevo all’età moderna. Leggere, copiare, pubblicare, ed. by Andrea Piccardi (Florence:
Polistampa, 2012), pp. 11–45; for Horace, see Chiara Nardello’s, Il commento di Francesco da Buti all’Ars poetica di Orazio (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Padua, 2008), pp. 33–50; for Persius, see Persius-Scholien. Die lateinische Persius-Kommentierung der Traditionen A, D und E, ed. by Udo W. Scholz and Claudia Wiener (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2009).
9 Guido da Pisa, Expositiones et glose. Declaratio super Comediam Dantis, ed. by Michele Rinaldi (Rome: Salerno, 2013), p. 245.
10 Persius-Scholien, p. 49 (commentary on Satira i., 114–15). See also late antique and medieval commentaries on Horace, Ars Poetica, p. 284.
This takes us back to the satyr-satire connection. This false etymology disseminates the idea that satire derives from or is connected to the original language of ‘monstra’ [monsters], creatures whose nature is hybrid, unclear.
The satirist is animated by an animal rage, that can kick off, twitch in any moment; he is an unbridled, brutal and riotous being. In the depth of his language brews a primordial violence.11
Gianbattista Tiepolo, ‘Satyr family (Pan and his family)’, etching from Scherzi di Fantasia series (c.1743–57). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ©MET under OASC licence, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/361896 Satyrs come from the forest, relegated outside the community, they are creatures to avoid. The central section of Horace’s Ars Poetica (ll. 202–50), an epistle presented as an informal letter to members of the Piso family and one of the key textbooks in medieval schools, is concerned with the origins of satire and satyrs’ irreverent nature.12 The great Latin poet claims that his
11 To convey this sense of disquiet, I accompany this study with a reproduction of Tiepolo’s etching of a satyr.
12 This section of the Epistle to the Pisos ought to be read through school commentaries on Horace. For the Anonymus Turicensis, see István Hajdú, ‘Ein Zürcher Kommentar aus
fictum carmen, his new poetry, is able to tame those woodland spirits (‘Silvis deducti caveant me iudice Fauni’, l. 244), to domesticate their habits, mixing (‘contemperare’ is the verb used in a popular commentary) some elements of their obscene repertoire with the sobriety of the tragic style. Arguably, Dante’s Commedia — as a whole — narrates a very similar process. The poet who emerges from the wild, harsh forest (‘aspra, selvaggia, forte’, Inf., i. 5) used to speak a bitter, malicious language (‘Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte’ [So bitter, that thought, that death is hardly worse], Inf., i. 7), the language of the tenzone with Forese Donati:
[…] ‘Se tu [Forese] riduci a mente qual fosti meco, e qual io [Dante] teco fui, ancor fia grave il memorar presente.
Di quella vita mi volse costui [Virgilio]
che mi va innanzi […]’. (Purg., xxiii. 115–19)
[If you (Forese) bring back to mind what you were once to me and I (Dante) to you, the memory of that will still be sore. I, from that life, was turned away by him (Virgil) who walks ahead of me…]
From that life, from that language that was unnecessarily obscene and offensive, Dante is turned away by Virgil, the author of the alta tragedìa (Inf., xx. 113).13 The process which transforms the language of the selva oscura into a sacred poem to the service of the Church and the Empire thus resembles the story narrated in Horace’s letter to the Pisos; it begins when the man of the ‘selva oscura’ curbs to the grave words of tragedy. In this sense, Dante’s satire (only one of the many languages of the comedìa), just like Horace’s satire, is a combination of the rustic and the tragic. The first two cantos of this vertical reading, Inferno xix and Purgatorio xix, aptly combine the two registers.
But there is more to it. Unlike in Horace, Dante’s satire is not simply legitimised by a stylistic compromise between the filthy and the sublime;
dem 12. Jahrhundert zur Ars poetica des Horaz’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen âge grec et latin 63 (1993), 231–93 (in particular pp. 261–63); for the Materia, see Karsten Friis-Jensen,
‘The Ars Poetica in Twelfth-Century France: The Horace of Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and John of Garland’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen âge grec et latin 60 (1990), 336–88 (in particular pp. 360–63); for Pseudoacro, see Otto Keller, Pseudacronis scholia in Horatium vetustiora (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902–1904), ad loc.
13 See Robert Hollander, ‘Tragedy in Dante’s Comedy’, The Sewanee Review 91:2 (1983), 240–60.
the violence of Dante’s satire takes a spin so radical that a stylistic solution cannot contain it. To find its full legitimisation, indeed, Dante’s satirical attack requires — as I shall show — a prophetic investiture directly from God, and this is what Paradiso xix can help us to understand. But let us proceed in order.