Still more stress is laid on this motive by Paolo
Giovio. Lorenzino, according to him, pilloried by a pamphlet of Molza,
broods over a deed whose novelty shall make his disgrace forgotten, and
ends by murdering his kinsman and prince. These are characteristic
features of this age of overstrained and despairing passions and
forces, and remind us of the burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus
in the time of Philip of Macedon
Ridicule and Wit
The corrective, not only of this modern desire for fame, but of all
highly developed individuality, is found in ridicule, especially when
expressed in the victorious form of wit. We read in the Middle Ages how
hostile armies, princes, and nobles, provoked one another with
symbolical insult, and how the defeated party was loaded with
symbolical outrage. Here and there, too, under the influence of
classical literature, wit began to be used as a weapon in theological
disputes, and the poetry of Provence produced a whole class of
satirical compositions. Even the Minnesanger, as their political poems
show, could adopt this tone when necessary. But wit could not be an
independent element in life till its appropriate victim, the developed
individual with personal pretensions, had appeared. Its weapons were
then by no means limited to the tongue and the pen, but included tricks
and practical jokes -- the so-called 'burle' and 'beffe'-- which form a
chief subject of many collections of novels.
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