Thoughts That Breathe and Words That Burn

Kerry Howley | July 11, 2005

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a fun piece on subversive lyric poems--known as libels--circa 1600:

Whether punning on Sir Francis Bacon's name or engaging in graphic speculation on the Duke of Buckingham's sexual proclivities, the writers used this "dodgy genre," as [editor Alistair] Bellany puts it, as a way to comment on events and public figures who, because of censorship laws, were otherwise off limits....[L]ibels "help make opposition conceivable: and speakable."

For instance, the death, in 1612, of Robert Cecil, King James I's most powerful minister and adviser, let loose a flood of scandal-mongering epitaphs that harped on his affairs with other courtiers' wives and the syphilitic condition of his genitalia: "Rotten with ruttinge like sores in September/ hee died as hee lived with a faulte in one member."

Whole thing here.

Collection of smut-filled 17th-century doggerel here.

Comments

Ron Hardin|7.11.05 @ 2:20PM|#

Pope on the death of Queen Caroline

Here lies wrapt in forty thousand towels
The only proof that Caroline had bowels

|7.11.05 @ 2:31PM|#

You mean smut-filled doggerel didn't start with the Clinton administration?!?

(Sound of Brent Bozell's head exploding)

(Also Michael Medved's...)

|7.11.05 @ 2:38PM|#

So when Eminem fires off a hurtin' verse at Ludacris ("Square Dance") or Insane Clown Posse ("Business") or the guy he alledgedly pistol-whipped for kissing his wife outside a nightclub ("Sing for the Moment"), he's really only carrying on the tradition of Alexander Pope, et al.

|7.11.05 @ 2:48PM|#

Stevo - wow, what depth of understanding you have for hip hop lyrics. I listen to a lot of hip hop and I had no idea that was what eminem was talkin' about.

As an aside, I do know ICP's first manager (or one of their early managers, whatever), and we got some serious VIP treatment when they came here to Phx with Snoop Dogg. But they still suck very badly.

|7.11.05 @ 2:54PM|#

Hip hop is carrying on the tradition of oral poetry going back to Homer and earlier: a pre (or post) literate male-dominated warrior society where dudes sit around and brag about their military prowess and access to resources (women, gold, and oxen vs. women, gold, and cars).

Homer just happened to get written down but the same stuff was going on all over the place and still is.

|7.11.05 @ 3:03PM|#

Brian,

And yet somehow society thinks it has progressed after all these years. Even better, most people believe that classical culture (including Classicists themselves) is somehow "archaic". Same shit, different epoch.

|7.11.05 @ 3:08PM|#

Stevo,
Feh. Eminem can't hold Tupac's jock as a poet/lyricist. Maybe if Eminem fakes his own death to do missionary work in Africa, I'll give him some props.

|7.11.05 @ 3:10PM|#

Sorry,

My post should have read, "most people (including Classicists themselves) believe...."

|7.11.05 @ 3:28PM|#

Works for comedy too. I'm not sure there's yet, at this date, anything as rude as Aristophanes on TV. At least broadcast TV. Though you have to wade through a lot of obscure political satire to get to the fart jokes.

|7.11.05 @ 3:54PM|#

Uh, yeah, Lowdog, I'm very street. :)

By the way, most people don't know that the original title of the Iliad was "When Hos Come Between Bros."

Some bitch's visage launched a thousand ships
Damn! They's wicked keel marks on her lips
She had the power to torch every tower that's boint
At this place called Ilium -- some kinda topless joint...

|7.11.05 @ 3:56PM|#

boint?

|7.11.05 @ 4:22PM|#

"boint:" "burnt" with Mississippi accent, smacky. Or New Jersey.

|7.11.05 @ 4:23PM|#

I had a class exclusively on this subject in graduate school. A lot of this stuff was read in coffee and tea houses by literate patrons to those who could not read. Sort of the CNN (or FoxNews) of the day.

smacky,

Anyone who has read the Lysistrata or Montaigne's Essays or what have you knows that being "dirty-minded" isn't the exclusive domain of us moderns. Or you can read about Pangloss rogering Paquette in Candide. :)

|7.11.05 @ 4:26PM|#

Um, I was trying to force "burnt" to rhyme with "boint."

Hey, here's an example of Eminem's genius -- he actually once found a rhyme for "oranges." It's "hinges" (as long as you pronounce "oranges" as "or-RIN-jez.")

|7.11.05 @ 4:47PM|#

Stevo,

Exactly! This is why I did my thesis on him. :-)