Simpliciana XLIII (2021)

Editorial

Während der Geburtsort Grimmelshausens als sicher gilt, herrscht immer noch Ungewissheit beim Geburtsdatum und -jahr. Nach wie vor ist nicht klar, ob Grimmelshausen 1621 oder 1622 geboren wurde. Folglich wissen wir nicht, wann der 400. Geburtstag des Dichters zu feiern ist: 2021 oder 2022? Um in Anbetracht dieser misslichen Situation dennoch den runden Geburtstag gebührend begehen zu können, einigten sich die Grimmelshausen-Gesellschaft, die Städte Gelnhausen, Oberkirch und Renchen auf eine gemeinsame pragmatische Lösung: Der 400. Geburtstag des simplicianischen Autors wird 2021 und 2022 mit über beide Jahre verteilten Veranstaltungen gefeiert. Ich glaube, diese Lösung hätte Grimmelshausen gefallen, denn auf diese Weise gibt es zwei Festjahre und nicht nur ein Jubiläumsjahr.

So fanden anlässlich des 400. Geburtstages von Grimmelshausen 2021 in Gelnhausen, Oberkirch und Renchen zahlreiche Veranstaltungen statt, deren Reihe 2022 fortgesetzt wird. In der Rubrik „Regionales“ findet der Interessierte einen Überblick über die im vergangenen Jahr durchgeführten Veranstaltungen. Besonders hervorhebenswert ist das in der Oberkircher Innenstadt aufgestellte Grimmelshausen-Denkmal, das am 9. Oktober 2021 feierlich enthüllt wurde.

In den vorliegenden Simpliciana werden die Vorträge veröffentlicht, die während der Tagung der Grimmelshausen-Gesellschaft zum Thema „Satirisches Schreiben bei Grimmelshausen und in der Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit“ Mitte September 2021 in Gelnhausen gehalten wurden. Darüber hinaus fanden zwei weitere größere Beiträge Eingang in das Jahrbuch.

Inzwischen ist ein neues Beiheft in unserer Buchreihe „Beihefte zu Simpliciana“ erschienen. Es handelt sich um die Erstveröffentlichung der vollständigen Habilitationsschrift von Hans Geulen aus dem Jahr 1971: Auffassungen und Formen der Geschehensdarbietung in erzählender Dichtung von Renaissance und Barock.

Die nächsten Tagungen der Grimmelshausen-Gesellschaft können bereits annonciert werden: Vom 23. bis zum 25. Juni 2022 wird in Oberkirch und Renchen eine Tagung durchgeführt, die sich mit „Geschlechtermodellen bei Grimmelshausen und in der Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit“ befassen wird. Die satzungsgemäße Mitgliederversammlung und Vorstandswahlen stehen am 25. Juni 2022 an. Die Einladung und das Tagungsprogramm sind in der Rubrik „Mitteilungen“ zu ←11 | 12→finden. Wie immer wünsche ich mir zahlreiche Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer, die im Juni 2022 nach Oberkirch und Renchen kommen werden.

Satire and Parody in Early Spanish Criticism: Towards an Autonomous Literary System

I set out to review in these pages certain features of Spanish literary criticism on satire and parody during the 16^th and 17^th centuries in order to identify some clues to the gestation – if not the birth – of an autonomous literary system.¹ We shall see that the critical treatment was far less rich and varied than is the case for the Spanish satirical production in that period. This can only partially be explained by the prevalence of classicist doctrines and models; in addition to this, critics had to struggle in order to extricate new categories and criteria for literary phenomena that were intertwined with other areas of social organisation.

My claim is that this systematic perspective enhances our understanding of several facts already noticed in the current state of the art. First, there was confusion in the vocabulary for this kind of texts: sátira may refer to formal verse satire, to Menippean satire, to Greek satiric drama, and to any insulting composition.² Besides, the notion of “verse ←15 | 16→satire” conflates two traditions, the Horatian one in Italian metres and the vernacular in romances and letrillas, with correspondingly stylistic divergences, as well as different audiences: the Horatian tradition appeals to a select readership, whereas the other reaches a wider public in chapbooks and oral performances.3 Next, satire had two ethical aspects: on the one hand, the genre was said to expose and correct moral flaws; on the other, it was censured as a form of gossip and slander.⁴ Even in the first, nobler sense, doubts arose about the authority of the poet making the correction, as compared to that of rulers, judges, or preachers. The ethical dimensions entailed issues of truth and reference: satirical works purportedly described real behaviours of actual individuals or groups, which in turn led to arguments about the fictionality, originality, and creativity of such writings.⁵ Lastly, satirical censure could aim at literary precedents, in which cases it merged into the notion of parody, or at least – in present terms – into that of intertextuality.⁶

All these features acquire more sense when we consider them as elements of a space of possibilities that was striving to take shape in ←16 | 17→early modern Spanish society.7 The varieties of satire directed to diverse audiences are consistent with the differentiation of the literary field in two subfields of large-scale and restricted production. The disagreements about morality, truth, authority, and innovation reveal that specific motivation criteria for the acceptance of literary communication were still undefined, and different symbolically-generalized communication media laid claim to it. In particular, the problem of intertextuality is crucial not only for innovation, but also for establishing the identity and closure of the literary system, and for understanding it as a field of position-takings.⁸ Thus, in the next few pages I shall review a bundle of theoretical and critical statements about satire and parody in order to pinpoint their significance as position-takings in this space of possibilities.

Satire

Let us begin with the definition of satire and the comments on it in Sebastián de Covarrubias’s Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (1611), an embryonic encyclopaedia of Renaissance culture. Covarrubias himself was well acquainted with Roman satire; for not only did he quote repeatedly Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, but also he translated into Spanish the Horatian corpus.⁹ His definition of the word sátira runs as follows: “Es un género de verso picante, el cual reprehende los vicios y desórdenes de los hombres; y poetas satíricos los que escribieron el tal verso, como Lucilio, Horacio, Juvenal” (TLCE, p. 1432b). He then discusses the etymology, and ends the entry adding: ←17 | 18→“SATÍRICO, el que escribe sátiras o tiene costumbre de decir mal” (TLCE, p. 1432b).

We find here a restricted understanding of satire as a poetic (metric) genre, whereas, at another point, Covarrubias mentions the satires by Menippus and Varro – without noting that these were written in prose (TLCE, p. 1271b). The definition of sátira includes a reference to its moral function or purpose, but the appendix on the derivative satírico registers the meaning ‘slander’. Moreover, beside the many references to Latin satires, there is one to the medieval Spanish poem Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, which Covarrubias calls a “sátira, con estilo pastoril”, and he adds: “No carece de misterio todo cuanto se dice en aquella poesía a la vista grosera; pero entendida es de mucho ingenio y agudeza por tocar no fábula, sino historia” (TLCE, p. 518a). This satire, then, tells history, i. e., truth, not fabulous invention.10 Even though this is at odds with Covarrubias’s notion of poetry as fiction,¹¹ the truth of the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo results paradoxically in a positive appraisal: the poem is witty for being truthful instead of fictitious. In sum, several features of early modern Spanish discussions of satire are present in Covarrubias’s Tesoro, but they are far from constituting a coherent system. Let us follow a few different threads.

Satire as Slander and Mockery

We find an early sample of the word sátira in its bad sense in Garcilaso de la Vega’s second elegy. He starts by depicting his inclination to labour and virtue, in contrast with the hypocrites whose appearances differ from reality; then, suddenly, he corrects himself:

Mas ¿dónde me llevó la pluma mía,

qu’a sátira me voi mi passo a passo

i aquesta que os escrivo es elegía?¹²

This remark has been interpreted as an invocation of standards of genre on a classicist background, which it indeed is.¹³ But there is a ←18 | 19→dimension of propriety as well: the poet wishes to avoid malicious talk, for he is aiming at a nobler kind of composition.14

Another locus classicus is Don Quixote’s praise of poetry, where he warns against satire and even advises Don Diego de Miranda to prevent his son from writing it:

La poesía, señor hidalgo, a mi parecer es como una doncella tierna y de poca edad y en todo estremo hermosa, a quien tienen cuidado de enriquecer, pulir y adornar otras muchas doncellas, que son todas las otras ciencias […]; hala de tener el que la tuviere a raya, no dejándola correr en torpes sátiras ni en desalmados sonetos. […] Riña vuesa merced a su hijo si hiciere sátiras que perjudiquen las honras ajenas, y castíguele, y rómpaselas.¹⁵

As we shall see, the measure thus urged becomes a general law among literary theoreticians.

Lope de Vega provides us with a third, more paradoxical instance. His Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos (a sort of Menippean satire in verse form with a variety of topics, tones, and intertexts)¹⁶ contain three poems against another piece of Menippean satire, Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnaso. The first one labels Boccalini an “escritor de sátiras”, and censures his “murmurar” about the Spaniards (RTB, p. 416). The second poem goes farther and decries satire as a crime and as an easy way of acquiring renown without learning or effort:

Con poco y vil estudio le acontece

difusa fama al sátiro delito; […]

Cuanto a la sátira, que en sus primerías se ejercitó en yambos, él [i. e. Aristotle] confiesa que se dijeron ansí de la voz griega ἰαμβίζειν, que quiere decir ‘denostar’, de manera que correspondía a las matracas de ahora. Mire, pues, vuestra excelencia, qué buena estuviera la sátira reducida a las pullas y apodos y a las injurias descorteses de la matraca.17

Quevedo, for his part, mocks Góngora as a satirical writer, whose works are mere matracas and – rhyme is reason – excrements:

satírico diz que estáis;

a todos nos dais matraca:

descubierto habéis la caca

con las cacas que cantáis.¹⁸

Let us now see what literary theoreticians had to say on these issues. I shall consider in this section Alonso López Pinciano’s Philosophia Antigua Poética (1596), Luis Alfonso de Carvallo’s Cisne de Apolo (1602), and Francisco Cascales’s Tablas Poéticas (1617). All three call satire a form of slander, and therefore a misconduct that in Antiquity was justly forbidden, punished, and banished, but they also admit that milder, more tolerable satirical styles were established afterwards.

There are, however, certain nuances. López Pinciano suggests that all kinds of detraction, even the harmless one of modern satire, should ←20 | 21→be avoided.19 Carvallo states that a certain amount of public criticism may be useful to society, but satire degenerated into unjust abuse and calumny.²⁰ He raises in this context the topic of the authority of the satirists: on the one hand, he compares their work to the task of justice officers who expose offenders to public shame; on the other, he suggests that the public reproof of vices is now the role of preachers (CA, fol. 142^r, 143^r). As to Cascales, he assumes that modern satire complies with moral standards and does not object to it.²¹

Regarding its popularity, López Pinciano admits that morally improper satire, i. e., the defamatory variety, is enjoyable to everybody (PAP, p. 318–319). This does not justify satire per se, however, for, in his view, the purpose of poetry is to teach with pleasure, and teaching is absent from such pieces; legitimate satire should carry the doctrine of moral philosophy or Ethics (PAP, p. 500–501). However, he makes a compromise as to form. The serious tradition of satire uses the heroic metre, namely dactylic hexameter for Latin and hendecasyllable for Italian and Spanish (PAP, p. 502–503), but López Pinciano states that he has seen good satires in “redondillas”, i. e., popular Spanish verse (PAP, p. 319). Cascales agrees with this observation and even turns it into a precept (TP, p. 313). Carvallo says nothing about verse, but makes two hints concerning the prevalence of abusive satire: he associates satire with matracas and popular jest (CA, fol. 142^r, 144^v), and remarks that most people could lecture on the topic of slander – from a practical point of view, to be sure (CA, fol. 145^r). Moreover, he illustrates this matter with examples outside the classical canon of Horace, Juvenal, and so on, and even outside verse satire, for he records two jokes that would belong in a jestbook, or in a piece of Menippean satire (CA, fol. 144^v, 145^r).

In sum, views on satire shifted between the moral and the literary codes. Poets expressed this in a variety of forms that range from the rhetorical correctio of Garcilaso to the playful hypocrisy of Lope, whereas theoreticians either advocated the prohibition of the genre or approved of its teachings. The conflict between ethical standards and ←21 | 22→pleasure was recorded, but left unresolved.22 In spite of the prevalence of canonical models – according to which satire was defined as a metrical genre –, theoreticians seem to have had a perception of the popular varieties and even of the prose forms.

Truth, Reference, and Invention

Right or wrong, corrective or abusive, satirical discourse presupposes the actual reality of the people and behaviour it describes, as shown in the examples of Covarrubias, Quevedo, and Lope de Vega. As I hinted above, this flies in the face of a growing demand for invention and fiction in poetry.²³ To deal with this issue, we need to take a step back and consider the Renaissance reception of Aristotle’s remarks on satire, already mentioned by Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola.

Aristotle advances a sketchy history of the poetic genres that begins with improvised invectives (ψόγοι), which later became metrical lampoons (ἰάμβοι) and finally gave way to comedy (Poetics 1448b27–37). According to Aristotle, iambic poetry retained the element of personal attack, whereas comedy dealt merely with laughing matter (1448b37–38). Later on, he notes that early comedy was still iambic, i. e., personal, until Crates began writing universal arguments (καθόλου ποιεῖν λόγους καὶ μύθους, 1449b8–9; see 1451b11–15 as well). This implies that only modern comedy, but not iambic poetry, satisfies the definition of the poet’s task as that of telling not what has happened, but the kind of thing that happens according to possibility and necessity, so that poetry tells what is universal, and history what is particular (1451a36–1b7).

Francesco Robortello interpreted these remarks as a criticism of slanderous poetry in the sense explained in the preceding section.²⁴ ←22 | 23→Pietro Vettori, on the contrary, pointed to a distinction that affects the very nature of the genres alluded. He writes that the iambic form consisted in censuring individuals (singulos homines perstringere), not universal classes (non genus aliquod ipsorum). Therefore, it contains nothing feigned and invented (nihil fictum & commenticium), whereas comic arguments consist of the adequate connection of feigned or, at most, partially true events (comminisci res aliquas, vel versa quadam ex parte ita coagmentare, ut idoneum argumentum fabulae sint).25 Consequently, iambic verses fall short of the essential nature of poetry, which Aristotle expresses as imitation of universals, and his modern commentators tend to call fiction.²⁶ This problem gives Lodovico Castelvetro occasion for remarkable reasoning. He wonders if satirical abuse makes real reference to particular misconduct, as history does to real events, in which case iambic compositions, strictly speaking, would not be poetical.²⁷ In passing, he reasserts – as he often does – his principle that invention, not verse, is the essential trait of poetry and the grounds of merit for the poet: