Menippeah

The Menippeah is a new literary genre or theory, based on the principles of philosophical aesthetics, semiotics and narratology. Alfred Barkov has developed this literary theory:

Menippeah is different from the three known classes of fiction: the epics, the lyrics, and the drama. It employs a specific way of narrating widely used even in everyday communication (when irony is intended.) [1]

The characteristics of a Menippeah

• Hidden (biased) narrator.
• Multiple plot contradictions.
• Inconsistency in the style.

There are three different plots within a Menippeah:

• The plot of the narrated false story erroneously taken for the ultimate content.
• The true story, which is to be reconstructed employing the contradictions and seemingly insignificant facts.
• The main plot depicting the Narrator as the main character.

The object of a menippeah is satire, with the hidden narrator as the object of the satire. By comparing the three plots of a menippeah we, indirectly, discover the true character of the narrator.

Examples

• Modern
  • Hamlet: The real narrator is Horatio; he narrates a story that shows him as a friend to all the main characters, who are dead and can't contradict him. His story also hides his guilt in the death of Ophelia.
  • Eugene Onegin: The real narrator is Onegin himself; he changes the story to hide his guilt.
• Ancient satire.
  • Mispogon[2] (Beard-Hater), by Julian the Apostate.
  • Saturae Menippeae, by Varro

See also

• Menippus
• Menippean satire

External links

• The Promenades with Eugene Onegin by Alfred Barkov.
• Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: A Literary Mystification by Alfred Barkov.
• Hamlet: A Tragedy of Errors or the Tragical Fate of William Shakespeare?, English summary of the book by Alfred Barkov.