Libel is a verse genre primarily of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
, descended from the tradition of
invective
Invective (from Middle English ''invectif'', or Old French and -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... and Late Latin ''invectus'') is abusive, or insulting ...
in classical
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
and
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of Roman civilization
*Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...
poetry. Libel is usually expressly political, and balder and coarser than
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
. Libels were generally not published but circulated among friends and political partisans in
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...
.
Classical roots
In
ancient Greece
Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...
, invective verse generally existed in the form of
epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia ...
s written, almost always anonymously, against public figures. In Latin, the genre grew in prestige and boldness, as major authors including
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ; 55–128), was a Roman poet. He is the author of the '' Satires'', a collection of satirical poems. The details of Juvenal's life are unclear, but references in his works to people f ...
and
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; ), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexual themes.
Life
...
wrote extended invectives without the cushion of anonymity. One of Catullus's fiercer examples, expunged from most post-classical collections of his work until the 20th century, is
Catullus 16, written against two critics:
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
's ''In Pisonem'', a
hyperbolic
Hyperbolic may refer to:
* of or pertaining to a hyperbola, a type of smooth curve lying in a plane in mathematics
** Hyperbolic geometry, a non-Euclidean geometry
** Hyperbolic functions, analogues of ordinary trigonometric functions, defined u ...
attack on
Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, is one of the best-known political examples.
See also
*
Monarchomachs
References
{{Reflist
External links
Catullus at perseus.org
Genres of poetry
Latin poetry
English poetry