Flyting

Flyting

Flyting is a contest of insults, often conducted in verse. The word has been adopted by social historians from Scots usage of the fifteenth and sixteenth century in which makars ("makaris") would engage in public verbal contests of high-flying, extravagant abuse structured in the form of a poetic joust; the classic written example is "The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie", which records a gloriously scurrilous contest between the poets Walter Kennedy and William Dunbar. The convention can be detected earlier in the confrontation of Beowulf and Unferth.

In Norse and Germanic cultures, flytings are used as either a prelude to battle or as a form of combat in their own right. The exchange is regular, if not ritualized, and the insults usually center on accusations of cowardice or sexual impropriety or perversion. Several poems of Norse Mythology contain many flytings or consist solely of flytings, including the Eddic poem Lokasenna, wherein Loki insults the Norse gods in the hall of Aegir, told by Snorri Sturluson [ [http://www.ealdriht.org/lokasenna.html "The flyting of Loki"] .] .

Hilary Mackie has detected in the "Iliad" a consistent differentiation between representations in Greek of Achaean and Trojan speech, [Mackie, "Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad" (Lanham MD: Rowmann & Littlefield) 1996, reviewed by Joshua T. Katz in "Language" 74.2 (1998) pp 408-09.] where Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse: "Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry" (Mackie 1998:83).

Flytings existed in Arabic poetry in a popular form called "naqa'id". Taunting songs are part of Inuit village culture.

Echoes of the genre continue into modern poetry. Hugh MacDiarmid's poem "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle", for example, has many passages of flyting in which the poet's opponent is, in effect, the rest of humanity.

Flyting is similar in both form and function to the modern African American practice of the dozens and freestyle battles.

Notes

See also

*Wit


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Look at other dictionaries:

  • flyting — [flīt′iŋ] n. 〚< flyte, flite, to contend, strive < OE flītan; akin to MHG vlīzen, to quarrel, Ger fleiss, diligence〛 a formalized exchange of taunts, insults, etc., as between warriors in Old English epics * * * ▪ Scottish verbal contest       ( …   Universalium

  • flyting — [flīt′iŋ] n. [< flyte, flite, to contend, strive < OE flītan; akin to MHG vlīzen, to quarrel, Ger fleiss, diligence] a formalized exchange of taunts, insults, etc., as between warriors in Old English epics …   English World dictionary

  • flyting —    From the obscure word flite, meaning to quarrel or dispute, the term flyting is most properly applied to a genre of Scottish poetry that seems to have originated in the late 15th or early 16th century, in which two poets exchanged vigorous,… …   Encyclopedia of medieval literature

  • flyting — I. variant of fliting II. ˈflīd.iŋ noun ( s) Etymology: flyting (I) : a dispute or exchange of personal abuse or ridicule especially in verse form between two characters in a poem (as an early epic) or between two poets (as of 16th century… …   Useful english dictionary

  • flyting — noun Etymology: Scots, literally, contention, gerund of flyte to contend, argue, from Middle English fliten, from Old English flītan; akin to Old High German flīzan to argue Date: 1508 a dispute or exchange of personal abuse in verse form …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • flyting — noun a) Contention, noisy argument. b) Scolding, rebuke …   Wiktionary

  • flyting — flyt·ing …   English syllables

  • The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie — Schir Johine the Ros, ane thing thair is compild , also known as The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie , is the earliest surviving example [Kinsley, James ed. William Dunbar, Poems OUP 1958, p.128] of the Scottish version of the flyting genre in… …   Wikipedia

  • William Dunbar — This article is about the Scottish poet, for other people of this name see William Dunbar (disambiguation). William Dunbar (c. 1460 ndash; c. 1520), Scottish poet, was probably a native of East Lothian. This is assumed from a satirical reference… …   Wikipedia

  • Walter Kennedy — (c.1455 1518?) was a Scottish makar associated with the renaissance court of James IV. He is perhaps best known as the defendant against William Dunbar in The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie , part of a poetic tournament which involved the public… …   Wikipedia

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