When Latin gets sick: mocking medical language in macaronic poetry
Abstract
Macaronic poetry is a curious cultural phenomenon, having originated in classical antiquity
and taken its standard form in the 15th century in northern Italy. Its basic feature is mixing of
linguistic varieties for a humorous effect. In this paper, connections between macaronic poetry
and the language of medicine have been observed at three levels. Firstly, starting with the idea
of language as a living organism, in particular Latin (Renaissance language par excellence), its
illness, from a humanist point of view, brought about by uncontrolled contamination with
vernacular, serves as a stimulus for its parodying in macaronic poetry; this is carried out by systematically
joining together stable, "healthy", classical material with inconsistent, "contagious"
elements of the vernacular. Secondly, a macaronic satire of quackery, Bartolotti’s Macharonea
medicinalis, one of the earliest macaronic poems, is analysed. Finally, linguistic expressions of
anatomical and pathological matter in macaronic poetry are presented in some detail, as in, for
example, the provision of a disproportionately high degree of scatological and obscene content
in macaronic texts, as well as a copious supply of lively metaphors concerning the body, and
parodical references to medical language that abound. Furthermore, anatomical representations
and descriptions of pathological and pseudo-pathological conditions and medical procedures
are reviewed as useful as displays of cultural matrices that are mirrored in language.
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