Petronius and the anatomy of fiction / Victoria Rimell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rimell, Victoria, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Petronius Arbiter. Satyricon.

Petronius Arbiter.

Petronius Arbiter--Technique.

Satire, Latin--History and criticism.

Satire, Latin.

Narration (Rhetoric)--History--To 1500.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Fiction--Technique.

Fiction.

Rhetoric, Ancient.

Rome--In literature.

Rome.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 239 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Petronius & the Anatomy of Fiction

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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:

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

Conclusion: Licence and labyrinths

App. I. The use of fundere and cognates in the Satyricon

App. II. The occurrence of fortuna or Fortuna in the Satyricon

App. III. Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consderis arvis?

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-226) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-280-43647-6

0-511-17803-4

0-511-04261-2

0-511-14854-2

0-511-30538-9

0-511-48235-3

0-511-04583-2

OCLC:

559323857