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基本説明
Metaphors of the body form an important feature of Petronius' Satyricon. This book argues that, the text can be read as a unified whole rather than as an episodic jumble, despite its fragmentation.
Full 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.
Contents
Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction: corporealities; 1. Rhetorical red herrings; 2. Behind the scenes; 3. The beast within; 4. From the horse's mouth; 5. Bella intestina; 6. Regurgitating Polyphemus; 7. Scars of knowledge; 8. How to eat Virgil; 9. Ghost stories; 10. Decomposing rhythms; 11. Conclusion: licence and labyrinths; Appendices; Bibliography; Index of passages discussed; Index of subjects.
