Petronius The Artist Essays On The Satyricon And Its Author

With one exception, the essays which form this book have appeared in various Classical periodicals. They do not claim to present a com prehensive account of Petronius and his work, but are intended to illustrate by discussion some aspects of the work and its author that seem, to me at least, to be of interest. "Did Tacitus quote Petronius" appeared in L'A ntiquiM Classique XXXVII, 2, 1968, 641-643; "On Tacitus' Biography of Petronius" and "Petronius, Priapus and Priapeum LXVIII" in Classica et Mediae valia XXVI 1-2, 1965, 233-245, and XXVII 1-2, 1966, 225-242 respectively; "Some Comments on Petronius' Portrayal of Character" will appear soon in Eranos; "Eating People is Right" appeared in Hermes 97 Bd., 3, 1969,381-384; "Some Themes of Concealment and Pretence in Petronius' Satyricon" in Latomus Tome XXVIII, I, 1969, 99-119; and" Petronius, A Portrait of the Artist" in Symbolae Osloenses XLV, 1970, U8-I28. I wish to thank the editors of these periodicals for their permission to reproduce the articles. Professor J.P. Sullivan was kind enough to let me see the proofs of his book: The Satyricon of Petronius, A Literary Study (London, 1968) before it was published. I acknowledge this with thanks. I wish to acknowledge permission from The Bodley Head to quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald, VoL II p. 9I. I wish to thank Mrs. A. Brodie for typing the material, and Mrs. L. Andrew for her help with the proofs.

With one exception, the essays which form this book have appeared in various Classical periodicals. They do not claim to present a com prehensive account of Petronius and his work, but are intended to illustrate by discussion some aspects of the work and its author that seem, to me at least, to be of interest. "Did Tacitus quote Petronius" appeared in L'Antiquite Classique XXXVII, 2, 1968, 641-643; "On Tacitus' Biography of Petronius" and "Petronius, Priapus and Priapeum LXVIII" in Classica et M ediae valia XXVI 1-2, 1965, 233-245, and XXVII 1-2, 1966, 225-242 respectively; "Some Comments on Petronius' Portrayal of Character" will appear soon in Eranos; "Eating People is Right" appeared in Hermes 97 Bd., 3, 1969, 381-384; "Some Themes of Concealment and Pretence in Petronius' Satyricon" in Latomus Tome XXVIII, I, 1969, 99-119; and" Petronius, A Portrait of the Artist" in Symbolae Osloenses XLV, 1970, lI8-rz8. I wish to thank the editors of these periodicals for their permission to reproduce the articles. Professor J. P. Sullivan was kind enough to let me see the proofs of his book: The Satyricon of Petronius, A Literary Study (London, 1968) before it was published. I acknowledge this with thanks. I wish to acknowledge permission from The Bodley Head to quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald, Vol. II p. 91. I wish to thank Mrs. A. Brodie for typing the material, and Mrs. L. Andrew for her help with the proofs.

The Satyricon of Petronius, a comic novel written in the first century A.D., is famous today primarily for its amazing banquet tale, "Trimalchio's Feast." But this episode is only one part of the larger picture of life during Nero's rule presented in the work. In this accessible discussion of Petronius's masterful use of parody, Gian Biagio Conte offers an interpretation of the Satyricon as a whole. He combines the scholarly precision of close reading with a significant, original theoretical model. At the heart of his interpretation, Conte reveals the technique of the "hidden author" that Petronius employs at the expense of his characters, in particular the teller of the story, Enclopius. By remaining hidden outside the narrative, Petronius invites the reader to smile at the folies de grandeur that occur in a culture of scholars and declaimers. Yet as Conte shows, behind the parody and inexhaustible humor of the Satyricon lies an unexpectedly serious lament. For those familiar with the Satyricon, as well as for new readers, Conte's book will be a reliable, enjoyable guide to the wonders the Satyricon contains.

`The language is refined, the smile not grave, My honest tongue recounts how men behave.' The Satyricon is the most celebrated work of fiction to have survived from the ancient world. It can be described as the first realistic novel, the father of the picaresque genre, and recounts the sleazy progress of a pair of literature scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean. En route they encounter type-figures the author wickedly satirizes - a teacher in higher education, a libidinous priest, a vulgar freedman turned millionaire, a manic poet, a superstitious sea-captain and a femme fatale. The novel has fascinated the literary world of Europe ever since, evoking praise for its elegant and hilarious description of the underside of Roman society, but also condemnation for some of its lewder subjects. This new and lively translation by P.G. Walsh captures the gaiety of the original, and the edition is supplemented by his superb Introduction giving an account of the plot, the various scholarly interpretations and the later history of its literary influcence. There are also extensive and detailed notes which serve to illuminate the reading of a text rich in literary in-jokes and allusion. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Book XVI of Tacitus' Annals is the last of the surviving books of the great Roman historian's monumental account of the reigns of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero. The unfinished book offers a stunning portrait of Nero in his last years, a man now free of the restraining influences of his mother Agrippina and tutor Seneca. Annals XVI presents such unforgettable scenes as the spectacle of Petronius' suicide, and the mad quest of Nero to find the gold of the Carthaginian queen Dido. This edition provides a commentary to the entire book, with notes carefully aimed at first-time readers of Tacitus as well as more advanced students. An introduction provides a guide to what we know of Tacitus' life and work, as well as to the reign of Nero and Tacitus' depiction of an empire in transition, of a Rome teetering on the verge of chaos and collapse. A full vocabulary at the end of the volume is a vital resource for students preparing this text for class work or assessment.

Virtually all theories of satire define it as a criticism of contemporary society. Some argue that satire criticizes the present in favor of a standard of values that has been superseded, and thus that satire is generally backward-looking and conservative. While this is often true of poetic satire, in this study Frank Palmeri asserts that narrative satire performs a different function, that it parodies both the established view of the world and that of its opponents, offering its own distinctive critical perspective. This theory of satire builds on the idea of dialogical parody in the work of Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, while revising Bakhtin's estimate of carnival. In Palmeri's view, the carnivalesque offers only an inverted mirror image of authoritative discourse, while parodic narrative satire suggests an alternative to both the official world and its inverted opposite. Palmeri applies this theory of narrative satire to five works of world literature, each of which has generated sharp controversy about the genre to which it rightly belongs: Petronius' Satyricon, Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. He analyzes the features that link these works and shows how the changing pairs of alternatives that are parodied in these satires reflect changes in the terms of social and cultural oppositions. Satire in Narrative will appeal to comparatists, specialists in eighteenth-century and American literature, and others interested in theories of genre and the relations between literary forms and social history.

This new translation attempts to capture the comic vigor and literary cunning of the original in the idioms of contemporary American English.