Scatology

For the Coil album, see Scatology (album).

In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.

Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), healthiness, and diseases such as tapeworms. The word derives from the Greek σκώρ (genitive σκατός, modern σκατό, pl. σκατά) meaning "feces".

A comprehensive study of scatology was documented by John Gregory Bourke under the title Scatalogic Rites of All Nations (1891). An abbreviated version of the work (with a foreword by Sigmund Freud), was published as The Portable Scatalog in 1994.^[1]

Psychology

In psychology, a scatology is an obsession with excretion or excrement, or the study of such obsessions. (See also coprophilia).

Sexuality

In a sexual context scatology refers to the romanticism of fecal matter. Whether in passing admiration, the use of feces in various sexual acts, or simply the act of seeing it. Entire subcultures in sexuality are devoted to this fetish.

Literature

In literature, "scatological" is a term to denote the literary trope of the grotesque body. It is used to describe works that make particular reference to excretion or excrement, as well as to toilet humor. A common example is John Dryden's MacFlecknoe, a poem that ridicules Dryden's contemporary, Thomas Shadwell. Dryden refers to him as "Thomas Sh--," deliberately evoking scatological imagery. In German literature in particular is a wealth of scatological texts and references, which includes such books as Collofino's Non Olet.^[2] A case which has provoked an unusual amount of comment in the academic literature is Mozart's scatological humour.

See also

• Coprolite

References

1. ^ Kaplan, Louis P. (1994). The Portable Scatalog. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0688132065. 
2. ^ Dundes, Alan; Carl R. Pagter (1992). Work hard and you shall be rewarded: urban folklore from the paperwork empire. Wayne State UP. p. 75–80. ISBN 9780814324325. http://books.google.com/books?id=cFvY2jWqBlQC&q=strong+anal+component. 

Sources

• Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World.
• Lewin, Ralph, Merde: excursions in scientific, cultural and socio-historical coprology. Random House, 1999. ISBN 0-375-50198-3.
• Susan Gubar, "The Female Monster in Augustan Satire." Signs 3.2 (Winter, 1977): 380-394.
• Jae Num Lee, Swift and Scatological Satire. U of New Mexico P, 1971. ISBN 0826301967.

Further reading

• Henderson, Jeffrey (1991). The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. Oxford UP. ISBN 0195066855. http://books.google.com/books?id=aBsR2BEuAq0C.