Mundus inversus explained
Mundus inversus, Latin for "world upside-down," is a literary topos in which the natural order of things is overturned and social hierarchies are reversed. More generally, it is a symbolic inversion of any sort.
Although the words are ancient, the term mundus inversus has been common in English only since the 1960s.[1]
In European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages,[2] Ernst Robert Curtius first identified the topos, illustrating it with one of the Carmina Burana ("Florebat olim studium"), about which he comments (p. 94):
Curtius concludes with a formula for creating the mundus inversus (p. 96): "Out of stringing together impossibilia grows a topos: 'the world upsidedown.'"
In Renaissance-era French culture
In The World Upside Down in 16th-Century French Literature and Visual Culture,[3] Vincent Robert-Nícoud introduces the mundus inversus by writing (p. 1):
In anthropology
In the 1978 book The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society (Symbol, Myth, and Ritual),[4] folklorist Barbara Babcock defines mundus inversus as (p. 14):
See also
- Pittura infamante, a Renaissance-era "defaming portrait" that often depicts mundus inversus motifs
External links
Notes and References
- https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mundus+inversus&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmundus%20inversus%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cmundus%20inversus%3B%2Cc0 Usage frequency of mundus inversus
- Book: Curtius, Ernst Robert . Ernst Robert Curtius . 1948 . Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter . Trask . Willard R. . European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages . 94–101. New York, Harper & Row .
- Book: Robert-Nícoud, Vincent . 2018 . The World Upside Down in 16th-Century French Literature and Visual Culture . Brill . 1. 10.1163/9789004381827_002 . 978-90-04-38182-7. 165377802 .
- Book: Babcock, Barbara A. . Barbara A. Babcock (folklorist) . 1978 . The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society (Symbol, Myth, and Ritual) . 978-0801411120.
