Humour Directed at the Persona

This chapter on persona-oriented humour argues that while it is a valuable insight that the persona is not identical with the author, the gap created between author and persona by humorous undercutting of the latter’s authority must not be exaggerated. By analysing the play of authority, sympathy, and distance enacted around the satiric persona, it is shown that the satirist has an aesthetic interest in a fierce struggle between persona and butt, where the outcome is not obvious. Similarly, a complex, ambivalent persona running the gamut from quasi-object to quasi-author helps in shaping a racy narrative while responsibility remains pending. Humour emerges as the ideal tool for this simultaneous subverting of the speaker and keeping him as the subject who appears to shape most of the text. The chapter explores Horace’s well-calculated self-irony, together with the rougher undermining of the speaker in Persius and Juvenal as examples.

Aesthetics · Art · Humanities · Irony · Literature · Narrative · Persona · Sociology · Sympathy · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Organic Chemistry Synthesis Methods · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Idealization and Irony in Sallust's Jugurtha

  Open Access•Jacob Miller, Jacob A Miller•The Classical Quarterly•2015

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