Overview

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative. The Romans claimed to have invented satire—one of the most enduring and certainly one of the most entertaining genres of literature bequeathed to posterity from the ancient world. Modern satire aims generally to puncture pretence and to hurt its targets with withering caricature and bruising irony, but Roman satire was not so easy to characterise. One of the earliest exponents (Lucilius) went in for some personal invective and set the tone for many a 21st-century scribbler keen to wound his enemies with well-chosen words, but later writers in the Roman tradition distanced themselves from the tradition of personal critique and were reluctant to paint themselves as in any sense attack-dogs. If they were inveighing against folly and vice, it was (they claimed) more in a spirit of positive encouragement to us all to live better and happier lives, freed from the shackles of character-flaws and absurd behaviour. Satire in verse was also a highly self-conscious literary exercise which invested its moral message with layers of irony and wit. This tradition of both personal and philosophical satire laid the foundations for the massive tradition of satire in Europe which continues to this day. Roman Verse Satires will examine the tradition of hexameter verse satires as practised by Ennius, Lucilius, Horace, Persius and Juvenal and will also present something of the massive influence which this this complex, at times contradictory and entertaining Roman genre had on later literature, culture and film.

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9781802074697

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'The book gives a full impression of what the poets actually do in their works by giving them lots of room to have their say…the style is engaging and readable.' Professor Kirk Freudenburg 'Roman Verse Satires is clear, lively and well informed. It covers the necessary ground - rhetoric, literary tradition, relation to philosophy, authenticity of the writer’s moral position - economically and well.' Professor Roland Mayer 'In a relatively brief book, Godwin has given us a survey at once detailed and wide-ranging of authors who might seem to deny summary or abbreviation, and never forgetting the pervasive presence of the tenets of the Stoics' Colin Veach, Classics for All

'The book gives a full impression of what the poets actually do in their works by giving them lots of room to have their say…the style is engaging and readable.' Professor Kirk Freudenburg 'Roman Verse Satires is clear, lively and well informed. It covers the necessary ground - rhetoric, literary tradition, relation to philosophy, authenticity of the writer’s moral position - economically and well.' Professor Roland Mayer

Author Information

John Godwin was for many years Head of Classics at Shrewsbury School, UK. His many publications include Juvenal: Satires Books III, IV and V (Aris & Phillips 2022, 2016 and 2020); Horace: Selected Satires (Bloomsbury 2018), Ovid: Metamorphoses III: A Selection (Bloomsbury 2013) and editions of Lucretius: De Rerum Natura Books IV and VI and the complete works of Catullus for the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series.

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