A01=Shadi Bartsch
abstract
academic
alcibiades
ancient rome
ars poetica
Author_Shadi Bartsch
cannibal
Category=DSBB
Category=DSC
commentary
community
criticism
dieting
diets
digestion
empire
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
food
historical
history
imagery
lampoon
language
literary analysis
literature
madness
metaphor
philosopher
philosophical
philosophy
poet
poetics
poetry
roman
satire
satirist
scholarly
seduction
sexuality
social studies
sodomite
stoic
textbook
verse
Product details
- ISBN 9780226241845
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 23 Mar 2015
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Roman poet and satirist Persius (34-62 CE) was unique among his peers for lampooning literary and social conventions from a distinctly Stoic point of view. A curious amalgam of mocking wit and philosophy, his Satires are rife with violent metaphors and unpleasant imagery and show little concern for the reader's enjoyment or understanding. In Persius, Shadi Bartsch explores this Stoic framework and argues that Persius sets his own bizarre metaphors of food, digestion, and sexuality against more appealing imagery to show that the latter - and the poetry containing it - harms rather than helps its audience. Ultimately, he encourages us to abandon metaphor altogether in favor of the non-emotive abstract truths of Stoic philosophy, to live in a world where neither alluring poetry, nor rich food, nor sexual charm play a role in philosophical teaching.
Shadi Bartsch is the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. She is the author, most recently, of The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire and coeditor of the Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca series, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
