Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Satire, Latin
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This thesis re-examines the imperial poet Juvenal. It focusses on what seems to me (against common opinion) the major technique through which Juvenal builds a safety cushion in a dangerous political climate: his complete extraction of himself from his poetry. Years of persona criticism controlled this innovation by searching to reconstruct a rhetorical mask. In contrast, this thesis aims to restore sensitivity to authorial self-concealment. I explain it as a strategy of coping with an adverse political situation. Juvenal retires from his poetry to generalise its force as much as possible, and deflect anyone from tracing it back to him.