Scatology

In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.

Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases such as tapeworms. The word derives from the Greek σκώρ (genitive σκατός) meaning "feces".

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.^[1]

Psychology

In psychology, a scatology is an obsession with excretion or excrement, or the study of such obsessions. (See also coprophilia.)

Sexual fetish

In sexual fetishism, scatology (usually abbreviated scat) refers to coprophilia, when a person is sexually aroused by fecal matter, whether in the use of feces in various sexual acts, watching someone defecating, or simply seeing the feces. 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.^[2] A case which has provoked an unusual amount of comment in the academic literature is Mozart's scatological humour. Smith, in his review of English literature's representations of scatology from the Middle Ages to the 18th century notes two attitudes towards scatology. One of these emphasises the merry and the carnivalesque. This is found in Chaucer and Shakespeare. The other attitude is one of self-disgust and misanthropy. This is found in the works of the Earl of Rochester and Jonathan Swift.^[3]

See also

• Coprolite
• Urolagnia – urination fetish

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.
• Smith, Peter J. (2012) Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representation in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift, Manchester University Press^[4]

Further reading

• Henderson, Jeffrey (1991). The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. Oxford UP. ISBN 0-19-506685-5.

References

1. Kaplan, Louis P. (1994). The Portable Scatalog. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-13206-5.
2. Dundes, Alan; Carl R. Pagter (1992). Work hard and you shall be rewarded: urban folklore from the paperwork empire. Wayne State UP. pp. 75–80. ISBN 978-0-8143-2432-5.
3. Smith (2012)
4. David Palumbo, David (2012) Review of Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representation in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift, by Peter J. Smith, Times Higher Education Oct 4, 2012 (Accessed Nov 2015)