Words that tear the flesh : essays on sarcasm in medieval and early modern literature and cultures / edited by Alan Baragona and Elizabeth L. Rambo.

Print version record.

Encountering snarks in Anglo-Saxon translation: one translator's top 10 list / Rick McDonald -- Trolling in Old Norse: ambiquity and incitement in Sneglu-Halla páttr / Christopher Abram -- Snark and the saint: the art of the Irish curse / Máire Johnson -- Comic authority: sarcasm in pre-modern Arabic literature / Jeremy Farrell -- Sarcasm and its consequences in diplomacy and politics im medieval Italy: Brunetto Latini's letter to Pavia and Dante's Monarchia / Nicolino Applauso -- "A lowed laghtur that lady logh"" laughter, snark, and sarcasm in middle English romance / Debra E. Best -- "Hostilis Inrisio": some instances of "derision with a certain severity" in medieval English literature / Brian S Lee -- Self-evident morals?: Affective reversal as social critique in Henryson's fables / Ester Bernstein -- Let's not get snarky about derision!: Fabliau husbands and wives in conversation / Patricia Sokolski -- Poking [fun] at [the foibles of] the flesh: the Galician-Portuguese cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer / Ellen Lorraine Friedrich -- Sarcasm in medieval German and Old Norse literature: from the Hildebransdslied to Fortunatus: the dark side of human behavior / Albrecht Classen -- Sarcasm and heresy: John Wyclif and the York Fall of the Angels play / Elza C. Tiner -- Lorenzo Valla's "intellectual violence": personal feuds and appropriated sarcasm / Scott O'Neil -- Snarky shrews: gender comedy and the uses of sarcasm / Joe Ricke.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-368) and indexes.

The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.

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