Modern Greek
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.
The word derives from the Greek word for "feces".
In literature, "scatological" is a common term to denote the literary trope akin to the grotesque body. It is used to describe works that make particular reference to excretion or excrement, as well as to toilet humor.
In sexual context scatology refers to sexual acts conducted with human (or other) excrement.
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.
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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. A case which has provoked an unusual amount of comment in the academic literature is Mozart's scatological humour.
Scatological studies
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".
See also
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 0-8263-0196-7.
