Gripla - 2022, Page 386

GRIPLA384
or for one hosting a dinner party. It is hard to say whether the addressee
really is a Grobianus – we get no description of what he does, just hear
advice concerning what he should do. Perhaps the advice, if successful,
brings the potential Grobianus into being. Though we must remember that
outside the frame of the advice, the real aim is to discourage any individual
from embodying the Grobianus.
The fact that the interlocutors are so different has significant implica-
tions for the overall layout of the two works. The Icelandic poet – as de-
scribed above – structures the material around the list of first sons and then
daughters, shifting the focus of the advice with each new child and their
particular vices. Dedekind’s Latin text is arranged rather differently. The
first book gives advice structured around a day in the life of a servant, with
the meals dominating. It consists of eleven chapters, the final five of which
are dedicated to all the grossness that the servant should get up to during
the evening meal. Book II, divided into nine chapters, focusses on what the
addressee should do when invited to a meal as guest, while the final chapter
gives advice on how to be a bad host to one’s own dinner guests. Finally,
Book III is more of a mixed bag, divided into eight wide-ranging chapters.
It is only the last of these which focusses on advice for women. The name
Grobiana appears at the head of that chapter, but the narrator is the same
person who has given advice to men: he explains that girls “rogant ipsas pau-
ca docere uelim” (beg that I should want to teach them some few things).60
Grobiana is not a female counterpart to the male narrator but rather any
misbehaving young lady who will receive the advice, an everywoman with
the potential to misbehave. Gribba is a thoroughly Icelandic invention.
Thus the Icelandic poem shows a tendency to dramatise the situation
of the narrator and addressees, turning them into fleshed-out individuals
with Grobbian, the father of a family which includes a wife and numerous
children each with their own name and unpleasant habits. Incidentally, a
similar approach, which goes beyond merely revelling in fairly anonymous
back-to-front advice, can be seen in a work entitled Grobiana’s Nuptials,
a bawdy comedy written in England around 1610 which exists in a single
manuscript.61 In this play, Grobianus is now a character and Grobiana his
daughter, for whom he is seeking a suitable marriage. While there is no
60 Dedekind, Grobianus, et Grobiana, 89v.
61 Rühl edited the play from the manuscript MS Bodl. 30 in Grobianus in England, 163–91.