Beyond Satire

Horace, Popular Invective and the Segregation of Literature

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9322956
AutoresIan Ruffell (University of Glasgow, autor correspondente), I A Ruffell
Ano2003
Volume93
Páginas35-65
Data de publicação2003-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of Roman Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0075-4358 • E-ISSN: 1753-528X
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3184638
OpenAlexW2124023092
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas21
Referências citadas31

Throughout its history, Latin Satire was engaged in acts of impersonation and masquerade. While written by and for members of an élite and highly literate class, it continually affected a low style in metre and diction, an aggressive engagement with or pointed withdrawal from contemporary social realities, and the partial or wholesale adoption of an authorial voice at some rungs below the highest of society. All this is well-known and relatively uncontroversial. What is also well-known is the way in which Roman satirists, especially Juvenal, were engaged in a dialogue with epic and other literary genres (including earlier satire). What is less accepted is that Roman satirists, not least Horace, were equally engaged in a dialogue with other non-literary or ‘subliterary’ traditions of verse. I shall be arguing that a primary intertext for the definition of Horace's poetry and poetic persona was the rich and varied contemporary tradition of popular invective poetry. I suggest that he is attempting to erect a cordon sanitaire between the genre of satire and these ‘unofficial’ or ‘folk’ forms, to segregate elite and popular culture, and to define his poetry as what we may anachronistically call literature

Art · Diction · Elite · EPIC · Invective · Literature · Persona · Poetry · Politics · Style (visual arts · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism