1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910450642103321

Autore

Rimell Victoria

Titolo

Petronius and the anatomy of fiction / / Victoria Rimell [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2002

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

Descrizione fisica

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

Disciplina

873/.01

Soggetti

Satire, Latin - History and criticism

Narration (Rhetoric) - History - To 1500

Fiction - Technique

Rhetoric, Ancient

Rome In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

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

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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?

Sommario/riassunto

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.