HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

and anatomies that are neglected only because the categories in which they belong are
unrecognized." " Both of them agreed that a new relation of the author to the work was the issue.
For Bakhtin. the Menippea expanded into the genre of the novel. "Thanks to this." Bakhtin wrote.
"the genre of the Menippea was able to wield such immense influence - to this day almost
entirely unappreciated in scholarship - in the history of the development of European novelistic
prose."
In terms of classical literary critici~rn,~ however, a serious and unfortunate consequence
of their work (which this dissertation is not prepared to examine in any great detail) was that the
ancient texts were themselves "deprived of a history". They were presented as one, and "that
individual works were not so much subjected to analysis as used to exemplify elements important
to the development of later literary traditions." When Bakhtin spoke of a "powerful and multibranched
generic tradition," he did not, Relihan argued, contemplate the change in the classical
genre through time, except to posit a prehistory for what he saw as a stable form."
Inside classical scholarship. Relihan elaborated on three important aspects of Menippean
satire - a fantastic narrative, the burlesque of language and literature. and practical jokes at the
expense of academic learning - which were important to this discussion and to which we now
briefly turn. The setting of Menippean satire was typically fantastic: such settings have been
catalogued with "posthumous judgements, dialogues of the dead, divine assemblies, heavenly
symposia, and sojorns in heaven or Hades." 65 In this fantastic setting, Menippean satire
travestied important things (epic, myth, religion etc) using humour as a weapon towards literary
and cultural authorities. Menippean sarire was true to the simplicity of its Cynic origins that
" Frye. 1973. 3 12.
h2 Bakhtin. 1 19.
"' See Relihan, 8.
Bakhtin, 1 15; Relihan. 8-9.
" Relihan. 2 1-22.