Satires

"Horace's first book of Satires is his debut work, a document of one man's self-fashioning on the cusp between Republic and Empire and a pivotal text in the history of Roman satire. It wrestles with the problem of how to define and assimilate satire and justifies the poet's own position in a suspicious society. The commentary gives full weight to the dense texture of these poems while helping readers interpret their most cryptic aspects and appreciate their technical finesse. The introduction puts Horace in context as late-Republican newcomer and a vital figure in the development of satire and discusses the structure and meaning of Satires I, literary and philosophical influences, style, metre, transmission and Horace's rich afterlife. Each poem is followed by an essay offering overall interpretation. This work is designed for upper-level students and scholars of classics but contains much of interest to specialists in later European literature"-- "Christoph Wieland (1804: 14) once wrote that reading Horace's satires was like going for a walk with him: always stopping for little detours and arriving exactly where you want to be or else right back where you started. My own extended stroll has been as zigzagging and stop-start as any Horatian ramble, spanning two continents, three departments and fifteen years, while the card index gave way to the memory stick and the son who was an infant when the book was commissioned reached adulthood. I find it as hard to know where Horace is going now as when I first encountered him (which is nothing but a compliment). Commentators have many vices, above all myopia. I once asked a colleague to remind me where in Latin literature I had read the old saying about bringing (unwanted) wood to the forest. A flicker of embarrassment before the gentle reply: 'In Horace's tenth satire, I think.' Plagiarism is another occupational hazard. I have ransacked the wisdom-hoards ofmany fellow-commentators, with an unfair bias, some may complain, towards my contemporaries. But the aim of this book is to encourage appreciation of the Satires as literature and collect in pocket form the most penetrating Horatian criticism of the last two decades. A third liability is un-Horatian long-windedness (and a fourth last-minute additions)"--

Year

2012

Language

Latin

Series

Cambridge Greek and Latin classics

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

1

Pages

370

ISBN

9780521452205

Data source: Wikidata