Yuk, God of the Grotesque

"Satan tempts Smarh with knowledge leading to despair, plunging him into the infinite, leading him to doubt God, and calling on Yuk, God of the Grotesque, to teach him about life, 'for the God of the grotesque is an excellent interpreter for explaining the world'...In fact, Yuk is really the God of Language, which is both grotesque and creative, the true form of immortality in that nothing exists outside it. For Yuk's power is all in speech. He opens his mouth and out come 'calumnies, lies, poetry, chimera, religions, parodies,' which expand, interact, amalgamate, 'enter ears, take root and sprout, construct and destroy, bury and unearth, raise up and bring low' (I, 202). To ground the vanity of the world in the grotesque autonomy of language will become a familiar theme in Flaubert..."

from Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty by Jonathan Culler