Scholars' Bedlam is a genre study of Menippean satire in the Renaissance. While the study acknowledges the influence of certain classical authors, especially Lucian, on the revival of the Menippean form in the Renaissance, it also seeks to explain the popularity of the Menippean satire by other means.

The initial chapter establishes a theoretical framework for understanding the revival of the form, discussing Renaissance Menippean satire as a vehicle for the expression of cynical and skeptical positions and also as an outlet for expressing the discontent which humanist scholars experienced with their increasingly competitive profession. The first chapter also links the Menippean satire in its Renaissance incarnation with trends of skepticism, with the social ambition of the humanist intelligentsia, and with the aesthetic category of the grotesque. Using Bakhtin and other theorists, the author defines the form as a type of intellectual satire which has a number of recognizable features, despite its various incarnations as dream vision, mock encomium, parodic learned treatise, and mock epic.

The form is discussed as one in which iconoclastic sentiments generally prevail and in which the satiric freedom to criticize cultural institutions is exercised.

The following four chapters examine representative Menippean satires. Chapter 2 examines the earliest Menippean satires in Italian humanism, most of which are not listed in Kirk's bibliography of Menippean satire. It also elicits two strains of the Menippean form: a purely academic form in the mock laus or university praelectio, and a more Lucianic form in the fictional satires of Pontano, Alberti, and Calcagnini.