Menippean satire: History and Key Facts

The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities. It has been broadly described as a mixture of allegory, picaresque narrative, and satirical commentary. Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms of parody and mythological burlesque, a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture, a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, and the rapid moving between styles and points of view.

The term is used by classical grammarians and by philologists mostly to refer to satires in prose (cf. the verse Satires of Juvenal and his imitators). Social types attacked and ridiculed by Menippean satires include "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds", although they are addressed in terms of "their occupational approach to life as distinct from their social behavior ... as mouthpieces of the idea they represent". Characterization in Menippean satire is more stylized than naturalistic, and presents people as an embodiment of the ideas they represent. The term 'Menippean satire' distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered by Aristophanes, which was based on personal attacks.

The writers of such satires include (among others) Antisthenes, Heraclides Ponticus, Bion of Borysthenes, the eponymous polemicist Menippus, Marcus Terentius Varro, Lucian, Seneca the Younger, Petronius, Apuleius, Gaius Lucilius, Horace, Boethius, and Julian the Apostate. Elements of Menippean satire are also found in the humor of the Gospels.

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