Classic Literature parodies of Topolino

Eta Beta psersimmon at eega.net
Thu Jul 8 00:41:53 CEST 2004


Timo,

>>the language
>>used in those stories by Chendi & Bottaro is sort of a parody of the
>>"aulic" Italian
>
>I haven't seen this term "aulic" too often, and to be honest, I don't know 
>exactly what it means.

Aulic = of or relating to a court/aula, from the Greek aule + ikos

It defines a type of language used by nobles and other high rank people,
very elaborate, formal and "learned", as opposed to the "vulgar" spoken
by commoners, but it also extends, in modern use, to describe something
obsolete and pretentious.

>But did they (Chendi & Bottaro) use 
>rhymes? (well, with rhymes it wouldn't be prose?)

No, in fact. It's declamatory, but not rhyming.

>>Brancaleone movies series, starring the late, great Vittorio Gassman
>
>Haven't seen or heard of these. "Surrealistic medieval comedy"? How would 
>you describe these films?

Uhm... side-splitting funny ? :-)

>Montypythonian?

Well, no, not really... it's a "simpler" kind of humour... what these
movies have in common with the Monty's "Holy Grail" is the historical
settings and the way characters speak their own dialects (or, rather,
with heavy accents), with the exception of the protagonist, a knight
(a rather unfortunate one, at that) and other high rank characters,
who speak said aulic Italian.

I think every Italian and their dogs have seen these movies some ten
times AND own a tape of them... I sure do :-)

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be foreign editions of them, not
even with just subtitles (translation would be a nightmare, and it
probably wouldn't work anyway).


Cheers!

Eta Beta



More information about the DCML mailing list