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Juvenal as Sublime Satirist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

William Kupersmith
William Kupersmith*
Affiliation:
Gonzaga University
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Abstract

Late eighteenth-century esteem for the moral qualities of the satires of Juvenal reflects a tradition which began with the church fathers. Renaissance critics praised Juvenal's style, which Boileau called “sublime.” Dryden, Dennis, and Johnson concurred with this neoclassical opinion. Putting Juvenal's sentiments into Christian contexts was not peculiar to the “Post-Augustans,” who continued Renaissance and neoclassical tradition. As Christian humanists, they used Juvenal's satires to supply “sentences” to add weight to their own moral sentiments.

Information

Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , May 1972 , pp. 508 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1972

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References

1 “With the Romantic movement came a concomitant distrust of rhetoric; the assumption, in some form or other, that rhetoric connotes insincerity underlies in very great part much of the adverse criticism to which Juvenal has been subjected.” E. J. Kenney, “Juvenal: Satirist or Rhetorician,” Latomus, 22 (1963), 706. The most influential recent critical attack on Juvenal as moralist is H. A. Mason's “Is Juvenal a Classic?” in Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Satire, ed. J. P. Sullivan (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 93–176. A much needed attempt to defend the ethics of Juvenal's satires has been made by David Wiesen in “Juvenal's Moral Character, an Introduction,” Latomus, 22 (1963), 440–71.

2 For the tradition and style of Juvenal's indignatio see William S. Anderson, “Juvenal and Quintilian,” Yale Classical Studies, 17 (1961), 3–93.

3 See John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), pp. 20–22, 32–35, 107–08.

4 Généalogie Deorum Gentilium Libri, Bk. xiv, Ch. xv, ed. Vicenzo Romano (Bari: Laterza, 1951), II, 728. I translate.

5 PoeticesLibriSeptem([Lyons], 1561), p. 323. Itranslate.

6 Modern Classical scholarship does not consider this distinction between Horatian and Juvenalian satire appropriate. See Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 258–73.

7 All Juvenal quotations from W. V. Clausen, ed., A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae, corr. rpt. (Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 1966). I translate.

8 “A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire” (1693) in Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson (London: Dent, 1962), ii, 130; hereafter cited as Essays.

9 “Preface to Sylvœ” (1685), Essays, ii, 31.

10 “To Matthew Prior, Esq; Upon the Roman Satirists,” in The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins Press, 1943), II, 218–19; hereafter cited as Dennis.

11 See Jules Brody, Boileau and Longinus (Geneva: Droz, 1958), pp. 36–87, and Samuel Holt Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England (New York: MLA, 1935), pp. 10–83. For a modern treatment of Juvenal and Longinus see Inez Gertrude Scott, The Grand Style in the Satires of Juvenal, Smith College Classical Studies, No. 8 (Northampton, Mass.: Smith Coll., 1927), pp. 18–45.

12 Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, Dissertation sur la Jo-conde, arrest burlesque, traité du sublime, ed. Charles-H. Boudhors (Paris: Société Les Belles Lettres, 1966), p. 112.

13 Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), i, 447; hereafter cited as Lives.

14 Scaliger's Poetics was one of the books in Johnson's undergraduate library according to Aleyn Lyell Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings, v (London: privately printed, 1928), 229.

15 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), s.v. “Sentence,” 3.

16 The Rambler, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Struass, v, (New Haven, Conn. : Yale Univ. Press, 1969), 206. Unfortunately, the Yale editors fail to note the false attribution to Dryden of the lines from Creech's translation of the Thirteenth Satire.

17 Quoted in the variorum D. lunii luvenalis Aquinatis Satyrae . . . Accedit Auli Persii Flacci Satirarum Liber (Leyden, 1695), p. 859. Samuel Johnson owned a copy of this edition. For the influence of Farnaby and other 17th-century scholars on Johnson, see Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom, “Johnson's London and Its Juvenalian Texts,” HLQ, 34 (1970), 1–23, and “Johnson's London and the Tools of Scholarship,” HLQ, 34 (1971), 115–39.

18 Of course 17th- and 18th-century scholars did distinguish between the overall moral tendency of Juvenal's satires, which held their respect and approval, and Juvenal's frank descriptions of sexual vice, which translators especially thought should be toned down. As Barten Holy-day remarked: “Yet what openness of Speech has in this kind been used by Juvenal, I have in my rendering of him, endeavour'd rather to correct, then excuse . . . fixing it for a Rule unto myself, that Better it is a Book should be lost, then a Man. Nor do 1 approve the unhappy Industry of some Interpreters of our Author . . . who think they expound nothing at all, if they expound not All: but I shall always think it an unhappy praise, to be accounted a better Grammarian, then a Christian” (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, and Aulus Perstus Flaccus, Translated and Illustrated, Oxford, 1673, sig. a2r ). I am grateful to Professor Howard D. Wein-brot for calling this reference to my attention.