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CHAPTER Monstrous Language, Monstrous Bodies: Bartolottis Macharonea Medicinalis ANTONELLA ANSANI Of all the non-canonical Italian Renaissance literary productions, macaronic poetry is unquestionably the most remarkable, as it poignantly transgresses, both in form and content, those classical precepts that were at the very foundations of the literary and cultural pursuits of the time. The earlier macaronic texts originated during the last two decades of the fifteenth century in the academic milieu of Padua, the capital of linguistic experimentalism throughout the Renaissance. This was a linguistically unstable period for Italy, when fourteenth-century literary Tuscan, humanistic Latin, and local dialects were all still competing for literary supremacy.1 It is within this linguistic conflict that macaronic poetry finds its raison d'etre. Macaronic, in fact, is an artificial, hybrid language that blends classical Latin morphology with lexical and syntactic structures of northern Italian dialects, primarily ofPadua, Mantua, and Cremona: Latin inflections are added to Italian or dialect stems, and in turn Latin words are intentionally italianized.2 By combining these three languages in their classical hexameters, macaronic poets generate what Ugo Enrico Paoli has aptly defined as a highly sophisticated linguistic monster. Other existing forms of a hybrid Latin simply alternate sentences written in different languages (i.e., Latin and French, or Latin and German), or regularly insert words from a different language into a correct Latin text. These linguistic operations, Paoli insists, do not produce a monster. Their visual equivalent would be a man next to a horse, or a woman closely followed by a fish. On the other hand, true monsters, like a centaur or a siren, are obtained only through the reciprocal interpenetration of two different natures. Following the same dynamic at work in the production of corporeal monsters, macaronic poetry does more than merely juxtapose Latin, Italian, 191 ANTONELLA ANSANI and northern dialects; it wholly merges them, generating a veritable linguistic monster.3 Monstrosity in macaronic poetry, however, is not limited to the linguistic sphere, but is at the very core of the genre. Linguistic subversion is in fact paralleled by a series of intentional deformations and reversals of classical conventions. Thus, macaronic poetry enacts what might be called a carnival of rhetorics. In imitation of epic poems, for instance, the macaronic poet invokes the Muses to help him in his endeavor ofsinging the life and deeds ofhis hero(s). The macaronic muses, however, are whores, and the heros "facchini," that is, porters, or most specifically peasants from Bergamo, the customary pariahs of Renaissance comic literature. Moreover, subverting the lofty subjects of"high" literature, macaronic poetry favors those themes belonging to culinary, scatological, and sexual spheres. Macaronic poets, as Cesare Segre clearly explains "rather than promoting a humble style to represent sublime subject matters, have bent the sublime style to represent humble matters."4 Finally, the most conspicuously transgressive aspect of macaronic poetry, which is clearly related to thematic preferences of this genre, is the representation of the grotesque, monstrous body described in all its most obscene functions. I would claim that the two monstrous forms, language and bodies, are thoroughly interdependent, and that one could not exist without the other. In her book Monstrous Imagination, Marie-Helene Huet reminds us that Latin continued to be the favored language ofmedical texts until at least the eighteenth century. This happened not only because Latin was considered the privileged scientific language, but also because itwas believed that "anatomical descriptions would be less shocking if expressed in words removed from everyday exchange and communication."5 By the same token, I argue that the monstrous bodies of the macaronic imagination could be appropriately and acceptably described only through an equally monstrous language, by far more removed than Latin from everyday forms of verbal transaction. More importantly, the interdependence existing between the monstrous language and the monstrous bodies it shows forth is embodied in the very term "macaronic," which the poets themselves chose to qualify their poetry.6 As Paoli demonstrates, the "maccheroni" from which the term macaronic derives are a sort of "gnocchi," aword that in turn signifies literally a kind ofcoarse and lumpy dough similar to dumplings, and, by extension a stupid person, more specifically a simpleton.7 Thus, the word macaronic not only signifies the language of this poetry but also its characters (the "facchini"), as well as the food of which they are so uncontrollably gluttonous. David Williams suggests that a strong connection exists between monstrosity and language. He observes that the mouth, in its basic functions of...

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