Satire and the Threat of Speech

Horace's Satires, Book 1

Catherine M. Schlegel

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780299209537
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In his first book of Satires, written in the late, violent days of the Roman republic, Horace exposes satiric speech as a tool of power and domination. Using critical theories from classics, speech act theory, and others, Catherine Schlegel argues that Horace's acute poetic observation of hostile speech provides insights into the operations of verbal control that are relevant to his time and to ours. She demonstrates that though Horace is forced by his political circumstances to develop a new, unthreatening style of satire, his poems contain a challenge to our most profound habits of violence, hierarchy, and domination. Focusing on the relationships between speaker and audience and between old and new style, Schlegel examines the internal conflicts of a notoriously difficult text. This exciting contribution to the field of Horatian studies will be of interest to classicists as well as other scholars interested in the genre of satire.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Satire and the Threat of Speech
• 1. The Limits of Satire, Iam satis est: Satires 1.1–3
• 2. Horace and His Fathers: Satires 1.4 and 1.6
• 3. Practicing Theory, or, Perils of the Open Road: Satires 1.5
• 4. Satire as Conflict Irresolution: Satires 1.7
• 5. Talking Heads and Canidian Poetics: Satires 1.8
• 6. Auditor—Adiutor: Satires 1.9
• 7. Unsatisfying Fulfillments: Satires 1.10 and the End of Satires 1
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index