Post by Perplexed on Apr 18, 2006 8:54:03 GMT
Menippeah is an interesting form of fiction. It's a new theory. I don't really know much about it, but let's investigate, shall we?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippeah
and from there, this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
and:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippean_satire
where the opinion is put forth that "Alice in Wonderland" may have been a menippean satire. What Ho! John Lennon as principal satiryst of the realm?
and, what of Rhapsody?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody
and:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippus
Oh, and what about:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Onegin
and!:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear
Notice the charators:
Oswald, who is a serviceable villain!
and a Fool!
Of course, Wikipedia is always a step ahead. In the same article, we find:
Further Trivia
Portions of a radio performance of the play on BBC Radio 3 in the UK was used by the Beatles for the song "I Am the Walrus"; it can be heard at the end of the song. The character Oswald's exhortation, "bury my body", as well as his lament, "O, untimely death!" (Act IV, Scene VI) were interpreted by fans as further pieces of evidence that band member Paul McCartney was dead.
[edit]
Prose about the Beatles. A long tradition of satire, rhapsodic writing,
and fasntastic narrational style.
And then the 60IF "document" emerges.
A piece of rhapsodic menippeah; written in an unsure, shifting and possibly unreliable narrational style.
And what about Christopher Marlowe faking his own death?
www.geocities.com/shakesp_marlowe/hamlet06.html
But a Paperback writer is a modern term for someone who cranks out popular novels. So Paul was singing about a man who wanted to write novels, pure and simple.
The art of novel writing is old indeed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel
Shakespearean plays , it seems to me, have much to do with novels; merely staging up and acting out the real human dramas, the interrelationships, the romance, the ironies, that form the core of most novels. In fact, the very stuff of life itself on a purely emotional level. It isn't politics or religion, it isn't stuffy history for histories sake or math or science or even academia.
It's life itself.
My point?
The several versions we have seen now of 60IF, the rewrites, the add-ons, the improvements? Well, it's all a fiction, oerhaps a satirical one, and truly, written with dubious narrative flow. It's about the writer more than it is the head charactors in the storyline. It shifts back and forth, and generates within itself classic examples of Menippean contradictions.
And that's the key. The inconsistensies belie the needs of the narrator, not the truth of the story.
Though, the story may be, in partm true, as is King Lear, Hamlet, many others.
Truth remounted for the needs of the narrator.
Whoever can uncoil and dissolve thiese things down, will reveal Sunking and his purpose. He has led us here for a reason.
We're here and things are, frankly, to say the least, perplexing.
If anyone can do it, like solving the enigmatic riddle of Turandot, be my guest.
Sunking, I am not trying to be discourteous or mean, only probative.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippeah
and from there, this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator
and:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippean_satire
where the opinion is put forth that "Alice in Wonderland" may have been a menippean satire. What Ho! John Lennon as principal satiryst of the realm?
and, what of Rhapsody?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody
and:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menippus
Oh, and what about:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Onegin
and!:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear
Notice the charators:
Oswald, who is a serviceable villain!
and a Fool!
Of course, Wikipedia is always a step ahead. In the same article, we find:
Further Trivia
Portions of a radio performance of the play on BBC Radio 3 in the UK was used by the Beatles for the song "I Am the Walrus"; it can be heard at the end of the song. The character Oswald's exhortation, "bury my body", as well as his lament, "O, untimely death!" (Act IV, Scene VI) were interpreted by fans as further pieces of evidence that band member Paul McCartney was dead.
[edit]
Prose about the Beatles. A long tradition of satire, rhapsodic writing,
and fasntastic narrational style.
And then the 60IF "document" emerges.
A piece of rhapsodic menippeah; written in an unsure, shifting and possibly unreliable narrational style.
And what about Christopher Marlowe faking his own death?
www.geocities.com/shakesp_marlowe/hamlet06.html
But a Paperback writer is a modern term for someone who cranks out popular novels. So Paul was singing about a man who wanted to write novels, pure and simple.
The art of novel writing is old indeed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel
Shakespearean plays , it seems to me, have much to do with novels; merely staging up and acting out the real human dramas, the interrelationships, the romance, the ironies, that form the core of most novels. In fact, the very stuff of life itself on a purely emotional level. It isn't politics or religion, it isn't stuffy history for histories sake or math or science or even academia.
It's life itself.
My point?
The several versions we have seen now of 60IF, the rewrites, the add-ons, the improvements? Well, it's all a fiction, oerhaps a satirical one, and truly, written with dubious narrative flow. It's about the writer more than it is the head charactors in the storyline. It shifts back and forth, and generates within itself classic examples of Menippean contradictions.
And that's the key. The inconsistensies belie the needs of the narrator, not the truth of the story.
Though, the story may be, in partm true, as is King Lear, Hamlet, many others.
Truth remounted for the needs of the narrator.
Whoever can uncoil and dissolve thiese things down, will reveal Sunking and his purpose. He has led us here for a reason.
We're here and things are, frankly, to say the least, perplexing.
If anyone can do it, like solving the enigmatic riddle of Turandot, be my guest.
Sunking, I am not trying to be discourteous or mean, only probative.
