Satyricon

Satire. A manner of writing that mixes a critical attitude with wit and humor in an effort to improve mankind and human institutions. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and several other techniques are almost always present. The satirist may insert serious statements of value or desired behavior, but most often he relies on an implicit moral code, understood by his audience and paid lip service by them. The satirist's goal is to point out the hypocrisy of his target in the hope that either the target or the audience will return to a real following of the code. Thus, satire is inescapably moral even when no explicit values are promoted in the work, for the satirist works within the framework of a widely spread value system. Many of the techniques of satire are devices of comparison, to show the similarity or contrast between two things. A list of incongruous items, an oxymoron, metaphors, and so forth are examples. See "The Purpose and Method of Satire" for more information



Gaius Petronius (~27-66 A.D.), the author of the Satyricon, was the emperor Nero's advisor in matters of luxury and extravagance (his unofficial title was arbiter elegantiae). As befitted his office, he slept days and partied nights. He was a lover of style, manners, and literature, and his personality was characterized by freedom, a lack of self-consciousness, a loose tongue, and an attitude. A rival's jealousy turned Nero agains Petronius, and he was forced to commit suicide. However, before his death, he lampooned Nero in his will and sent the emperor a copy.

The Satyricon was probably written around 61 A.D.and first printed in 1664. It is a very long work, of which we only have fragments. Petronius probably read it in installments to his friends, and possibly to the court of Nero. The Cena is one of the longer fragments; its survival in its entirety suggests that people have been enjoying it as a separable story for a long time. A banquet is the traditional setting for the kind of light conversation that is featured in the Cena.
The Satyricon itself, as its name implies, is a satire. The origin of the word "satire" has been a subject for academic debate: some say it comes from satura, or medley, while others theorize that it refers to something which is goat-like, like a satyr (smelly, rude, unkempt, and hairy?). Petronius satirizes anything and everything, using taste as the only standard. This is NOT a moralistic story intended to produce reform, as we often imagine a satire to be. We never know Petronius's own opinion (although he warns prudes not to criticize his story), because he doesn't give it to us directly. The only opinions we have are those of the characters in the story. Encolpius, as we shall see, criticizes Trimalchio, but Encolpius is no great prize either, so what is his criticism worth?
More specifically, the Satyricon is a Menippean satire. This genre, originally a humorous discussion of philosophy in alternating prose and verse, is characterized by the use of many different styles. In the Satyricon, accordingly, we find proverbs, verse, interpolated stories, and varied levels of language (from the very vulgar to the very elegant).
Some of the stories told by Trimalchio's guests are part of the genre called Milesian tales. These are funny, often questionable, stories characterized by a great deal of variety and incongruity in their plots, and by lots of digressions. They have a lot in common with the more outlandish controversiae of the rhetorical schools, as we shall see.

T S Eliot's seminal poem of cultural disintegration The Waste Land is prefaced by a verbatim quotation out of Trimalchio's account of visiting the Cumaean Sibyl, a supposedly immortal prophetess whose counsel was once sought on all matters of grave importance, but whose grotto by Neronian times had become just another site of local interest along with all the usual Mediterranean tourist traps:
Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere,
et cum illi pueri dicerent: "Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις;" respondebat illa: "ἀποθανεῖν θέλω".
(I myself saw the Cumaean Sibyl with my own eyes, hanging in a basket, and whenever the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?", she used to answer, "I want to die.")

The Waste Land[A] (1922) is a revolutionary, highly influential 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem – its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures – the poem has nonetheless become a familiar touchstone of modern literature. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih."[C]