Scholars' Bedlam is a genre study of Menippean satire in the Renaissance. While the study acknowledges the influence of certain classical authors, especially Lucian, on the revival of the Menippean form in the Renaissance, it also seeks to explain the popularity of the Menippean satire by other means. The initial chapter establishes a theoretical framework for understanding the revival of the form, discussing Renaissance Menippean satire as a vehicle for the expression of cynical and skeptical positions and also as an outlet for expressing the discontent which humanist scholars experienced with their increasingly competitive profession. The first chapter also links the Menippean satire in its Renaissance incarnation with trends of skepticism, with the social ambition of the humanist intelligentsia, and with the aesthetic category of the grotesque. Using Bakhtin and other theorists, the author defines the form as a type of intellectual satire which has a number of recognizable features, despite its various incarnations as dream vision, mock encomium, parodic learned treatise, and mock epic. The form is discussed as one in which iconoclastic sentiments generally prevail and in which the satiric freedom to criticize cultural institutions is exercised.

W. Scott Blanchard received his Ph.D. at Columbia University and is now an Associate Professor at College Misericordia in Pennsylvania. He has published articles on a variety of topics in Studies in Philology, The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and in an anthology on Tudor literature and politics, Rethinking the Henrician Era: New Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts. He is currently working on the genre of the invective in Italian humanism.