SOURCE: Suárez, José I. “The Basic Characteristics of the Menippean Satire and Their Application to Vicentine Comedy.” In The Carnival Stage: Vicentine Comedy within the Serio-Comic Mode, pp. 73-153. Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Suárez examines the carnivalesque elements in Vicente's plays that conform to the generic characteristics of ancient Menippean comedy.

In his study on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin lists fourteen characteristics as basic to the ancient Menippea. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the relationship between this genre and the plays of Gil Vicente by exemplifying each characteristic as found in the Portuguese playwright's works. At times, slight alterations must be made in the definitions of certain characteristics since the Menippea, a most flexible genre, continued its evolution in its postantiquity phase and through the time of Gil Vicente (the waning of the Middle Ages).

Analysis of the...