One of the things I love about this list is that when things get rolling,
it's because somebody raked open an old scab. In particular an inherently
erroneous old scab. The recriminations of January revisited.

To the point--what the hell is/are macaronics. This argument has been all
over the road about polyglot writing by Modernists. Joyce probably comes
closest with his multilingual multilayered puns and entendres. But none of
this, neither Pound nor Joyce nor the Rosetta nor world peace have
intrinsically a goddamn thing to do with macaronics. What we've dealt with
so far has been an exercise in caca-moronics. Now please READ CAREFULLY, as
THE MENU HAS CHANGED:

MACARONICS is a species of BURLESQUE poetry, in which words forming a modern
vernacular, with LATIN endings, are turned into Latinate verse, producing a
comic effect. SOMETIMES, but RARELY, Greek is used instead of Latin.

The real founder of the practice, however, was TEOFILO FOLENGO (1491‹1544),
whose mock heroic Liber Macaronices appeared in 1517. Folengo was a
Benedictine monk, who escaped from his monastery and wandered through Italy,
living a dissolute life, and supporting himself by his absurd verses, which
he described as an attempt to produce in literature a verse not unlike like
macaroni, i.e. a gross, rude and rustic mixture of flour, cheese and butter.
Not the Kraft dinner of today.

He wrote under the pseudonym of Merlinus Coccaius, and his poem is an
elaborate burlesque epic, in twenty-five books, or macaronea; it is an
medley of chivalrous feats, ridiculous and squalid adventures, and satirical
allegory.

Korg is correct in citing Rabelais insofar as Macaronic influence--its
influence on his work was major, specifically in Gargantua. But it existed
long before Rabelais.

It was immediately imitated in Italy by a number of minor poets and in
France a writer whose real name was Antoine de la Sablebut used the
Antonius de Arena (d. 1544), published at Avignon in 1573 a MEJORA
ENTEPRIZA, which was a burlesque account of Charles V¹s disastrous campaign
in Provence.

Folengo in Italy and Arena in France are considered as the macaronic
classics. In the I7th century, Joannes Caecilius Frey (1580‹1631) published
a Recitus veritabilis, on a skirmish between the vine-growers of Rueil and
the bowmen of Paris.

"De branche in brancham degringolat, et faciens pouf Ex ormo cadit, et dunes
obvertit Olympo."

Moliere employed macaronic verse in the ceremonial scene with the doctors in
Le Malade imaginaire. Works in macaronic prose are rarer. An Anti-Clopinus
by Antony Hotman may be mentioned and the EPITOLAE OBSURORUM VIRORUM (1515).
Macaronic prose was not unknown as an artifice of serious oratory, and
abounds in the sermons of Michel Menot (1440‹I518).


The use of true macaronics was frequent in Great Britain, where the only
prominent example of it is the POLENZO MIDDINIA ascribed to William Drummond
of Hawthornden. This short epic was probably composed early in the 17th
century, but was not published until 1684. It follows the example set by
Arena, and describes with burlesque solemnity a quarrel between two villages
on the Firth of Forth. Drummond shows great ingenuity in the tacking on of
Latin terminations to his Lowland Scots vernacular:


"Lifeguardamque sibi saevas vocat improba lassas,

Maggaeam, magis doctam milkare cowaeas,

Et doctam sweepare flooras, et sternere beddas,

Quaeque novit spinnare, et longas ducere threedas..."


And that's it guys. Sick Have-a-bammer Macaronices, thunk-et nun-qualm.


GAVIN