Object-Oriented Humour

This chapter on object-oriented humour argues that a favourite device of Roman satire is to use the structure of ‘mockery from below’ for various attacks. It analyses how metaphors ‘heightening’ the target or ‘lowering’ the speaker are employed by Horace and Juvenal when the target is not actually someone or something in a high position; for Persius, this is achieved by metaphorical ‘swelling’/‘piercing’. In effect, the satiric persona often cheats the reader into sympathizing with his attack as righteous. In a discussion of the special case of Juvenal’s Satires 6 and 9, it is argued that the satirist’s heightening of his objects there — women and passive homosexuals — endows them with such vigour that they overpower the speaker himself.

Art · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Computer Science · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods