Adoxograph

Polycrates, disciple of Gorgias, wrote in praise of mice, pots, pebbles. Others of bees, salt, those are the Adoxographs. Dio Chrysostomos has a praise of mosquitoes, parrots, and hair. Lucian, praise of the fly.

[A]udiences laugh heartily because the adoxographs, if done with mock seriousness, are a broad form of irony, related to sarcasm. […] In the N-Town Passion Play I, Lucifer is an implied presenter of the play and an implied controller of its events. He addresses the audience directly and confidentially in an extraordinary 124-line adoxograph which is part social satire and part seriocomic plea for our commitment to his suzerainty […] The diabolical adoxographs that have been identified here are collectively an analogue of such cosmic symmetries as those in Dante [Alighieri] […]