Flyting

Flyting is a contest of insults, often conducted in verse.^[1] The word has been adopted by social historians following the example of William J. Ong^[2] 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 term "flyt" is Scottish for “quarreling,” or “contention.”^[3] After the Middle Ages, flyting became obsolete in Scottish literature, though the tradition itself never completely died out among Celtic authors.^[3]

Flyting is similar in both form and function to the modern African American practice of freestyle battles and the historic practice of the dozens.^[4]

In Germanic cultures, the convention can be detected earlier, for example in the confrontation of Beowulf and Unferð in Beowulf.^[5] Flytings were 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 Norse mythological poems contain flyting (or consist solely of flyting), including the poem Lokasenna, wherein Loki insults the Norse gods in the hall of Ægir, and the poem Hárbarðsljóð Hárbarðr (generally considered to be Odin in disguise) engages in flyting with the god Thor.^[6]

Hilary Mackie has detected in the Iliad a consistent differentiation between representations in Greek of Achaean and Trojan speech,^[7] where Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse: "Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry" (Mackie 1998:83).

Taunting songs are part of many cultures predating Scottish flyting, such as Inuit civilization. Flyting also existed in Arabic poetry in a popular form called naqa'id, as well as the competitive verses of Japanese Haikai.

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.

Robert Hendrickson, The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins refers to flyting as a form of logomachy (ie, word fighting) and cites its use by pre-Islamic Arabs, who hurled curses at the enemy as they went into combat, as a colorful example.

A form of flyting can also be observed in the Monkey Island games, in which the protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood, must win sword fights with a series of insults and retorts. Though swords are held and a fighting stance assumed, no actual sword fighting ever takes place. This is commonly referred to as Insult Swordfighting.

Notes

See also

• Wit

External links

• Flyting - britannica.com