A01=Lee Fratantuono
Age Group_Uncategorized
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ancient civilizations
ancient literature
Author_Lee Fratantuono
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
Category=HBJD
Category=HPCA
Category=NHDA
Category=QDHA
classical studies
comparative literature
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Greek studies
Julio-Claudian principate
Language_English
Latin literature
Menippean satire
Nero
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Roman Empire
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781666933055
- Weight: 730g
- Dimensions: 160 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 22 Aug 2023
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Few surviving works of classical literature have cast the haunting, hilarious, insightful, and eerie spell conjured by the Satyricon of the Neronian courtier and eventual victim Petronius. Fragmentary, opaque, and enigmatic, at times it seems that deception and obfuscation are the favorite tricks of its author. A Reading of Petronius’ Satyricon offers a fresh look at this genre-defying masterpiece, proceeding episode by episode and scene by scene through a vision of the hell that humanity has fashioned for itself. Petronius mercilessly and exactingly appraises Rome’s embrace of the Golden Age dreams of the Augustan principate, judging his fellow citizens and himself by the yardstick of the Neronian reign that broods over them like an avenging specter. Petronius' Satyricon offers medicine for ambulatory corpses, a prescription that consists of notifying the dead of the diagnosis, and of pointing out the inevitable and eminently logical antidote for those consumed by insatiable hunger and unfulfillable longing. Bitterly sardonic and preternaturally serene, Lee Fratantuono’s reading reveals Petronius to be nothing less than the ultimate literary voice of a dying dynasty, a prose and poetic verbal magician of serious intention, a virtuoso in the art of unmasking the ghoulish horror and inconsolable sadness that lurk often just below the surface of the comic.
Lee Fratantuono is adjunct professor in the Department of Classics at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth.
