Satires of Rome : threatening poses from Lucilius to Juvenal
This survey of Roman satire locates its most salient possibilities and effects at the center of Roman cultural and political self-understanding. This book describes the genre's numerous shifts in focus and tone over several centuries (from Lucilius to Juvenal) not as mere "generic adjustments" that reflect the personal preferences of its authors, but as separate chapters in a special, generically encoded story of Rome's lost, and much lionized, Republican identity
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xviii, 289 pages ; 24 cm
9780521803571, 9780521006217, 9780511328558, 0521803578, 052100621X, 0511328559
48486157
1. Horace. The diatribe satires (Sermones 1.1-1.3): "You're no Lucilius" Sermones book 1 and the problem of genre. Remembered voices: satire made new in Sermones 1.1. The social poetics of Horatian libertas: since when is "enough" a "feast"? Hitting satire's finis: along for the ride in Sermones 1.5. Dogged by ambition: Sermones 1.6-10. Book 2 and the totalitarian squeeze: new rules for a New Age. Panegyric bluster and Ennius' Scipio in Horace, Sermones 2.1. Coming to terms with Scipio: the new look of post-Actian satire. Big friends and bravado in Sermones 2.1. Book 2 and the hissings of compliance. Nasidienus' dinner-party: too much of not enough
2. Persius. Of narrative and cosmogony: Persius and the invention of Nero. The Prologue: top-down aesthetics and the making of oneself. Faking it in Nero's orgasmatron: Persius 1 and the death of criticism. The satirist-physician and his out-of-joint world. Satire's lean feast: finding a lost "pile" in P. 2. Teaching and tail-wagging, critique as crutch: P. 4. Left for broke: satire as legacy in P. 6
3. Juvenal. A lost voice found: Juvenal and the poetics of too much, too late. Rememberred monsters: time warp and martyr tales in Trajan's Rome. Ghost-assault in Juv. 1. The poor man's Lucilius. Life on the edge: from exaggeration to self-defeat. Beating a dead fish: the emperor-satirist of Juv. 4. Satires 3 and 5: the poor man's lunch of Umbricius and Trebius