Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction
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| Title: | Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction |
|---|---|
| Description: | Petronius'Satyricon, long regarded as the first'novel'of the Western tradition, has always sparked controversy. It has been puzzled over as a strikingly modernist riddle, elevated as a work of exemplary comic realism, condemned as obscene and repackaged as a morality tale. This reading of the surviving portions of the work shows how the Satyricon fuses the anarchic and the classic, the comic and the disturbing, and presents readers with a labyrinth of narratorial viewpoints. Dr Rimell argues that the surviving fragments are connected by an imagery of disintegration, focused on the pervasive Neronian metaphor of the literary text as a human or animal body. Throughout, she discusses the limits of dominant twentieth-century views of the Satyricon as bawdy pantomime, and challenges prevailing restrictions of Petronian corporeality to material or non-metaphorical realms. This'novel'emerges as both very Roman and very satirical in its'intestinal'view of reality. |
| Authors: | Victoria Rimell |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Satire, Latin--History and criticism, Fiction--Technique, Narration (Rhetoric) |
| Categories: | TRAVEL / Special Interest / Literary, LITERARY CRITICISM / General |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | Petronius'Satyricon, long regarded as the first'novel'of the Western tradition, has always sparked controversy. It has been puzzled over as a strikingly modernist riddle, elevated as a work of exemplary comic realism, condemned as obscene and repackaged as a morality tale. This reading of the surviving portions of the work shows how the Satyricon fuses the anarchic and the classic, the comic and the disturbing, and presents readers with a labyrinth of narratorial viewpoints. Dr Rimell argues that the surviving fragments are connected by an imagery of disintegration, focused on the pervasive Neronian metaphor of the literary text as a human or animal body. Throughout, she discusses the limits of dominant twentieth-century views of the Satyricon as bawdy pantomime, and challenges prevailing restrictions of Petronian corporeality to material or non-metaphorical realms. This'novel'emerges as both very Roman and very satirical in its'intestinal'view of reality. |
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| ISBN: | 9780521815864 9780511042614 |
