Juvenal

The first complete study of Roman verse satire to appear since 1976 provides a fresh and exciting survey of the field. Rather than describing satire's history as a series of discrete achievements, it relates those achievements to one another in such a way that, in the movement from Lucilius, to Horace, to Persius, to Juvenal, we are made to sense, and see performed, the increasing pressure of imperial oversight in ancient Rome.

Taking particular plays and poems from Roman comic theatre and the genre of Latin satire, this book finds Rome sending up Roman culture - making a mess of drama, jesting at rustic gaucherie, caricaturing the cult of masculine aggression. Writing Down Rome explores the robust poetic of self-denigration. Henderson's essays celebrate the energetic self-mockery that powers much of Roman poetry. They range widely over comedy, lyric, bucolic, and, in particular, the Roman speciality of satire.

This book contains twenty-six articles on a wide range of topics in Latin literature by the eminent scholar and former Professor of Latin at Oxford, Robin Nisbet. Original, stimulating, and at times provocative, this collection represents some of the best in Latin scholarship in recent years.

You people put importance on your lives. Well, my life has never been important to anyone. I haven't got any guilt about anything, bragged the mass-murderer Charles Manson. These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. . . . They are running in the streets--and they are coming right at you! When a real murderer accuses the society he has brutalized, we are shocked, but we are thrilled by the same accusations when they are mouthed by a fictional rebel, outlaw, or monster. In Bitter Carnival, Michael Andr Bernstein explores this contradiction and defines a new figure: the Abject Hero. Standing at the junction of contestation and conformity, the Abject Hero occupies the logically impossible space created by the intersection of the satanic and the servile. Bernstein shows that we heroicize the Abject Hero because he represents a convention that has become a staple of our common mythology, as seductive in mass culture as it is in high art. Moving from an examination of classical Latin satire; through radically new analyses of Diderot, Dostoevsky, and Cline; and culminating in the courtroom testimony of Charles Manson, Bitter Carnival offers a revisionist rereading of the entire tradition of the Saturnalian dialogue between masters and slaves, monarchs and fools, philosophers and madmen, citizens and malcontents. It contests the supposedly regenerative power of the carnivalesque and challenges the pieties of utopian radicalism fashionable in contemporary academic thinking. The clarity of its argument and literary style compel us to confront a powerful dilemma that engages some of the most central issues in literary studies, ethics, cultural history, and critical theory today.

Rhetoric is once again becoming valued as an essential element in the exploration of the ancient world. The present volume is part of a general renaissance in the study of rhetoric and bears testimony to a discipline undergoing rapid and exciting change. It draws together established and newer scholars in the field to produce a probing and innovative analysis of the role played by rhetoric in Roman culture. Utilizing a variety of critical approaches and methodologies, these scholars examine not only the role of rhetoric in Roman society but also the relationship between rhetoric and Rome's major literary genres. Roman Eloquence emphasises the theory and practice of rhetoric in a variety of social, political and literary contexts. In addition to demonstrating rhetoric's critical significance for Roman culture, the studies reveal the important role played by rhetoric in the formation of the various genres of literature. This accessible and critically up-to-date volume will be of interest to Classicists, literary theorists and anyone concerned with the origins, development and influence of Roman rhetorical theory and practice.

This book examines the uses which Dryden makes of Latin in his poetry and his critical writing, firstly through quotation and allusion, and secondly through formal translation. The first half explores the paradox that Dryden's sense of himself as a modern English writer is often articulated by means of a turn to classical Latin, while the contemporary English nation is conceptualized through references to ancient Rome. The second half offers readings of Dryden's translations from Horace, Juvenal, Lucretius, Ovid, and Virgil, culminating in a long essay on Dryden's Aeneis. Dryden used translation from the Latin poets as a way of exploring new territory: in the public sphere, to engage with empire and its loss, and in the private world, to contemplate selfhood and its dissolution. In following the varied traces of Rome in the texture of Dryden's writing, and by emphasizing his continual engagement with mutability and metamorphosis, this book argues the case for Dryden as a thoughtful, humanistic poet.

A chronological guide to influential Greek and Roman writers, Fifty Key Classical Authors is an invaluable introduction to the literature, philosophy and history of the ancient world. Including essays on Sappho, Polybius and Lucan, as well as on major figures such as Homer, Plato, Catullus and Cicero, this book is a vital tool for all students of classical civilization.