The Vulnerable Body Stuffed bellies and bad taste:
Description: The Vulnerable Body Stuffed bellies and bad taste: Persius and the poem made flesh How does Roman verse satire (or, so far, Horace) represent and deal with BODIES? satura satur - satis Vulnerability in writingreading Does it take one to
Related Topics
Download Presentation
"The Vulnerable Body Stuffed bellies and bad taste:" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this website for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
Presentation Transcript
slide1. The Vulnerable Body Stuffed bellies and bad taste: Persius and the poem made flesh<br>
slide2. How does Roman verse satire (or,
so far, Horace) represent and deal with BODIES?
satura – satur - satis<br>
slide3. Vulnerability in writing/reading Does it take one to know one?
Are satirists/comedians who undermine themselves especially powerful and appealing?<br>
slide4. Vulnerable literary forms: the scazon Scazons/choliambics (= limping iambic- Gk ‘cholos’ = lame )
This is the metre Persius uses in his ‘prologue’.
It was invented by Hipponax, and ‘droops’ or ‘drags its foot’ at the end of the line. The final foot is always a spondee, i.e. two long syllables.
E.g. Catullus 8, which begins…
miser Catulle, desinas ineptire<br>
slide5. It all boils down to…. decoctius = ‘something more boiled down’
Persius Satire 1.125
Concentrate? Potion? Medicine? Strong-tasting and pungent?
A new (Stoic) take on the aesthetic of brevitas, or brevity?<br>
slide6. ‘Persius is hard to read. He
wants it that way’.
callida iunctura (Horace Ars Poetica 47-8) becomes iunctura acris (Persius 5.14)<br>
slide7. Radically different or respectful heir? Horace Sat.2.1.1-2: ‘There is a whole class of people who think I’m too harsh in satire, and that I am stretching the genre past its legal limit’.<br>
slide8. The Stoic satirist Heir to Horace and also a Stoic: one of the grounding paradoxes of Persius’ text?
Is Stoic satire itself a contradiction in terms?<br>
slide9. But Stoicism + satire also a natural pair? Satire a traditional vehicle for sharp moral exhortation. Established relationship between verse satire and diatribe.
Aesthetically, Stoic thinking is compatible with the critical, aggressive tone of satire.
Roman Stoic thought, like Roman satire, is polemical, wants to jolt people out of assumptions and beliefs, attacks the status quo.
Satiric sermo, with its embrace of dialogue, can allude to Platonic dialogue and to the model of didactic exchange that lies at the heart of Stoic praxis. Cf. Seneca and Lucilius in the Letters.
Satire can operate as a kind of Stoic therapy? Roman Stoicism is primarily focused on ethics, rather than physics and logic, while satire in Rome has the function of grappling with corruption and especially with the corrupt, bodily passions – greed, lust, anger, bitterness – which Stoic training seeks to understand and control.
Satire and Stoic thinking/praxis share metaphors: the Stoic teacher is a ‘doctor’ treating ‘patients’ with ‘medicine’, and healing moral and emotional weaknesses as illnesses or wounds /Satire is the most corporeal of Roman literary forms – bodies, especially depraved, loose, deformed, weakened and repulsive bodies, are its bread and butter.<br>
slide10. Persius’ bellies Prologue, 9-11: ‘Who taught the magpie to copy human speech? It was the belly, that master of the arts, that purveyor of genius, such an artist at miming voices that are denied him.’<br>
slide11. Satire 3.96-103 You’re looking pale, my friend!’ ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Well see to it, whatever it is. Your skin’s turning yellow.’
‘It’s not as pale as yours: don’t try to imitate my guardian.
It’s him I’ve just buried, not you.’ ‘Carry on then, I’ll say
nothing.’ Stuffed from his feasting he goes white-bellied
to bathe, but as he drinks, his throat emitting long noxious
belches, a sudden tremor makes the warm glass slip from
his hand, his bared teeth chatter, and the greasy food slides
from his slack mouth. Then it’s the bugle, the candles, and
finally the dear deceased, thick-coated with perfumed balm,<br>
slide12. Metaphors to think on/with Poetry/satire as medicine and as food
Poetry/satire as something ingested (gets inside us/under our skin)
Body as container for the soul.
Poetry as (human) body, (human) body as poetry
Reading as cannibalism?<br>
slide13. The ‘prologue’ That’s not how I suddenly become a poet,
By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene,
Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus.
I leave the Muses, and Pirene’s pale
Spring, to those with busts to which
A crown of ivy clings; a semi-pagan
bring my song to the bards’ holy rites.
What teaches the parrot to squawk: ‘Hello!’
And urges the magpie to try human speech?
It’s that master of arts, and dispenser of skills,
Hunger, expert at trying out sounds nature denies.
For if there’s the gleam of a hope of crafty gain,
You’ll hear crow-poets and magpie-poetesses
Singing in praise of Pegaseian nectar.<br>
slide2. How does Roman verse satire (or,
so far, Horace) represent and deal with BODIES?
satura – satur - satis<br>
slide3. Vulnerability in writing/reading Does it take one to know one?
Are satirists/comedians who undermine themselves especially powerful and appealing?<br>
slide4. Vulnerable literary forms: the scazon Scazons/choliambics (= limping iambic- Gk ‘cholos’ = lame )
This is the metre Persius uses in his ‘prologue’.
It was invented by Hipponax, and ‘droops’ or ‘drags its foot’ at the end of the line. The final foot is always a spondee, i.e. two long syllables.
E.g. Catullus 8, which begins…
miser Catulle, desinas ineptire<br>
slide5. It all boils down to…. decoctius = ‘something more boiled down’
Persius Satire 1.125
Concentrate? Potion? Medicine? Strong-tasting and pungent?
A new (Stoic) take on the aesthetic of brevitas, or brevity?<br>
slide6. ‘Persius is hard to read. He
wants it that way’.
callida iunctura (Horace Ars Poetica 47-8) becomes iunctura acris (Persius 5.14)<br>
slide7. Radically different or respectful heir? Horace Sat.2.1.1-2: ‘There is a whole class of people who think I’m too harsh in satire, and that I am stretching the genre past its legal limit’.<br>
slide8. The Stoic satirist Heir to Horace and also a Stoic: one of the grounding paradoxes of Persius’ text?
Is Stoic satire itself a contradiction in terms?<br>
slide9. But Stoicism + satire also a natural pair? Satire a traditional vehicle for sharp moral exhortation. Established relationship between verse satire and diatribe.
Aesthetically, Stoic thinking is compatible with the critical, aggressive tone of satire.
Roman Stoic thought, like Roman satire, is polemical, wants to jolt people out of assumptions and beliefs, attacks the status quo.
Satiric sermo, with its embrace of dialogue, can allude to Platonic dialogue and to the model of didactic exchange that lies at the heart of Stoic praxis. Cf. Seneca and Lucilius in the Letters.
Satire can operate as a kind of Stoic therapy? Roman Stoicism is primarily focused on ethics, rather than physics and logic, while satire in Rome has the function of grappling with corruption and especially with the corrupt, bodily passions – greed, lust, anger, bitterness – which Stoic training seeks to understand and control.
Satire and Stoic thinking/praxis share metaphors: the Stoic teacher is a ‘doctor’ treating ‘patients’ with ‘medicine’, and healing moral and emotional weaknesses as illnesses or wounds /Satire is the most corporeal of Roman literary forms – bodies, especially depraved, loose, deformed, weakened and repulsive bodies, are its bread and butter.<br>
slide10. Persius’ bellies Prologue, 9-11: ‘Who taught the magpie to copy human speech? It was the belly, that master of the arts, that purveyor of genius, such an artist at miming voices that are denied him.’<br>
slide11. Satire 3.96-103 You’re looking pale, my friend!’ ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Well see to it, whatever it is. Your skin’s turning yellow.’
‘It’s not as pale as yours: don’t try to imitate my guardian.
It’s him I’ve just buried, not you.’ ‘Carry on then, I’ll say
nothing.’ Stuffed from his feasting he goes white-bellied
to bathe, but as he drinks, his throat emitting long noxious
belches, a sudden tremor makes the warm glass slip from
his hand, his bared teeth chatter, and the greasy food slides
from his slack mouth. Then it’s the bugle, the candles, and
finally the dear deceased, thick-coated with perfumed balm,<br>
slide12. Metaphors to think on/with Poetry/satire as medicine and as food
Poetry/satire as something ingested (gets inside us/under our skin)
Body as container for the soul.
Poetry as (human) body, (human) body as poetry
Reading as cannibalism?<br>
slide13. The ‘prologue’ That’s not how I suddenly become a poet,
By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene,
Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus.
I leave the Muses, and Pirene’s pale
Spring, to those with busts to which
A crown of ivy clings; a semi-pagan
bring my song to the bards’ holy rites.
What teaches the parrot to squawk: ‘Hello!’
And urges the magpie to try human speech?
It’s that master of arts, and dispenser of skills,
Hunger, expert at trying out sounds nature denies.
For if there’s the gleam of a hope of crafty gain,
You’ll hear crow-poets and magpie-poetesses
Singing in praise of Pegaseian nectar.<br>