VALERIE ALLEN is Associate Professor of Literature at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, USA.

Introduction: The Midden Age Part I: Beginning Old Farts For the Edification of Copious Shitters and Costive Maidens Whose Hours At Siege Should Be Profitably Employed 'Sometimes I sits and thinks; Sometimes I just sits' Hard Lessons Logic 101 The Music Album Musical Bum Butts and Instruments: Nature vs. Art The Musical Universe Canticus Canticorum [Song of Songs] Broken Air The Nose Knows I/Thou13. One Flesh Pneuma A Short Excursus on Wind Till Death Us Do Part Inspiration 'Oh dear, what can the matter be? Three old ladies got stuck in the lavatory' 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly' Farting at the Devil Filthy Lucre22. Shitting Ducats Duck-Rabbit, Face-Bottom Part II: In Between In the Beginning was the Word The Silver-Tongued Butt The Grammar of Farts Potent Words Legitimate Etymology Rebuilding Babel Bastard Laughter Better out Than In Spend a Penny, Save a Penny Flatus of the Voice Conclusion: die afterwissenschaft [end-knowledge, pseudo-science, butthole-scholarship] The Mystery of Roland Fartprints of Roland

This book presents waste as an aesthetic category that introduces an arsy-versy world where detritus is precious. This aesthetic is applied in the second part to etymology, poking through the 'paternal dungheaps' of words, and tracing their origins not to Eden but to Babel, puns, and word play.