Classical Satire: A Bibliography
(This bibliography supplements and annotates those found in the Penguin texts of satires by Horace and Juvenal, which should also be consulted.)1. Books on Classical Satire
Anderson, William S. Essays on Roman Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Collects Anderson's important essays, primarily on Horace and Juvenal.
Anderson's essays have been seminal for the study of both poets.
Braund, Susan H. Satire and Society in Ancient Rome. Exeter Studies in History, No. 23.
Exeter: University of Exeter, 1989.
A collection of essays on various topics, including friendship, the city and the
country, law, food, and women.
Coffey, Michael. Roman Satire (London: Methuen; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976).
Sections on the origins of satire, on the Lucilian tradition (including chapters on
Horace, Persius, and Juvenal), and on Menippean satire (including Seneca and
Petronius).
Duff, J. Wright. Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1937.
Similar in method (description and summary) and scope to Coffey's later book,
but includes a chapter on Martial.
Knoche, Ulrich. Roman Satire. Trans. Edwin S. Ramage. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1975.
Chapters on the Roman character of satire, the origin of the term, and on
individual satirists: Ennius, Lucilius, Varro, Horace, Seneca, Petronius, Persius, and
Juvenal, as well as on satire at the end of the Republic and in the reign of Domitian. The
chapters are useful factual introductions to the satires.
Richlin, Amy. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor. Revised
edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Considerations of sexual attitudes (attractions and repulsions) and behavior in
Rome, of representations of that behavior in literature, and of their psychological
possibilities leads to an analysis of the relationship between sexuality and aggression in
satire--ultimately the satire of Juvenal. Sexual aggression in Rome is always masculine,
always directed against women or (as often) boys.
Rudd, Niall. Themes in Roman Satire. London: Duckworth, 1986.
The themes that Rudd treats are (1) the aims and motives of the satirist, (2)
freedom and authority, (3) style and public, (4) class and patronage, (5) Greek and the
Greeks, (6) women and sex. For the first five topics, Rudd's method is to discuss the
topic as it applies to Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. In the case of the last topic,
he discusses, adultery, fornication, and homosexuality.
Sullivan, J. R., ed.. Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Satire. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1963.
Includes particularly useful essays by Anderson on Horace and H. A. Mason on
Juvenal, as well as essays on Persius and Petronius.
Van Rooy, C. A. Studies in Classical Satire and Related Critical Theory. London: E. J. Brill,
1966.
Primarily concerned with classical definitions of satire, ideas about satire, and
forms of satire. The focus is as much on Greek satire as on Roman.
Witke, Charles. Latin Satire: The Structure of Persuasion. Leiden: Brill, 1970.
Introductory chapters on Roman and Greek satire, followed by individual chapters
on Horace, Persius, Juvenal, Petronius, and three relatively early medieval satirists.
Includes a detailed discussion of Horace's Satires 2.6 and Juvenal's Satire 3. Emphasizes
the relation of satiric techniques to satiric purposes. Sees satire as characteristically the
poet's presentation of everyday life.
2. Horace
Armstrong, David. Horace. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
A general study, primarily critical. The chapter on the satires notes that the
Roman sermon was broader that what is usually understood by the term "satire." Sees
Horace as a satirist whose moderation is expressed and enhanced by his artfulness. Book
I is structured like a Bach suite, with three triplets of poems followed by an epilogue,
while the structure of Book II is contrastive.
Bernstein, Michael André. "O Totiens Servus: Saturnalia and Servitude in Augustan Rome."
Critical Inquiry 13.3 (Spring 1987): 450-74.
Argues that Bakhtin is wrong about the significance of the Saturnalia. The
Saturnalia provided some useful possibilities to the satirist, but its carnivalesque qualities
are limited by its short time and by the darker implications of the reign of Saturn. The
limitations are exemplified by an ironic reading of Davus in Horace's Satires 1.7.
DuQuesnay, L. M. LeM. "Horace and Maecenas: The Propaganda Value of Sermones I." In
Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984. 19-58.
Sees Horace's portraits of Maecenas and his friends as exactly suited to the
political requirements of the early Augustan period.
Fraenkel, Eduard. Horace. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
A compendious and authoritative source, but concentrates on the particular poems
rather than biography, background, and ideas. Its readings of individual poems (including
almost all of Book I of the Satires) are informed and informative but do not amount to
fully satisfactory interpretations.
Freudenburg, Kirk. The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993.
Concerned primarily with Book 1 of the Satires, and, more particularly, with
Satires 1.4 and 1.10. Argues that Horace's "diatribes" and his persona are ironic and in a
clear rhetorical and dramatic tradition identified that tradition with Aristotle, whose
influence on Horace is particularly important. Detailed (especially on scholarship) and
somewhat repetitious.
Griffin, Jasper. "Horace in the Thirties." In Horace 2000: A Celebration. Ed. Niall Rudd.
London: Duckworth, 1993. 1-22.
Politics is significantly absent from Horace's satires, in part because he had
himself been a member of the army of Brutus and Cassius. His satires "at the same time
both express and conceal the anger and scorn he felt, in that unseemly society, in a
mortifying position, intimidated and sneered at, the freedmann's upstart son."
Henderson, John. "Be Alert (Your Country Needs Lerts): Horace Satires 1.9." Proceedings of
the Cambridge Philological Society n.s. 39 (1993): 67-93.
A playful and deconstructive analysis on Satires 1.9, based essentially on an
equation of the poet and the pest. That equation exemplifies the self-mockery of satire,
and it illustrates the interplay between the apparent ideology of equality and the actual
practice of patronage.
McGann, M. J. "The Three Worlds of Horace's Satires." In Horace, ed. C. D. N. Costa.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. 59-93.
Includes sections on the relationship of the self to society (the public world and
the private realm of friends), on madness, and on art. Descriptive in approach; strong on
the ideas of Horace's Satires but weak on their formal character.
McNeill, Randall L. B. Horace: Image, Identity, and Audience. Baltimore; Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001.
A short but thoughtful introduction to Horace's work as a whole, but with
considerable material on the satires. McNeill argues that Horace undertakes a series of
purposeful poses in his poems.
Oliensis, Ellen. Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998.
Looks at the "fusion of mask and self" in Horace's satires. Argues that in Book I
the young and unestablished Horace tactfully adopts a largely self-deferential position but
that in Book II, published after Horace's social and artistic situation became secure, he
mocks the poems and poet of Book I.
Rudd, Niall. The Satires of Horace. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Includes chapters on Horace's diatribes (1.1, 1.2, 1.3), on Horace's relationship to
Maecenas, on "entertainments in Book I (5, 7, 8, 9), on Horace and Lucilius (discussing
1.4 and 1.10), and on Horace;'s use of names. Argues that Book II is self-consciously
structured if not fully coherent, and discusses its diatribes (2.2, 2.3, 2.7), its use of food
and drink (2.4 and 2.8), with further chapters on 2.5 and 2.6. An interesting appendix on
Dryden's critical discussion of Horace and Juvenal concludes that he "is wrong or
misleading on every point."
Zetzel, J. E. G. "Horace's Liber Sermonum: The Structure of Ambiguity." Arethusa 13.1
(Spring 1980): 59-77.
Looks in detail at the structure of Book I. The whole book "is controlled by an
ironic doubleness of vision, a permanent doubt as to the intention of the poems."
Juvenal
Adorno, T. "Juvenal's Error." In Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life. Trans. E.
F. N. Jephcott. Thetford, 1978.
A brief essay, more on satire in general than Juvenal. Juvenal's mistake is his
statement that it is hard not to write satire. The evil in modern times is so ubiquitous that
it cannot be satirize. (Where, for instance, is the "good" to which it can be compared?)
Braund, S. H. Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal's Third Book of Satires. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Although primarily concerned with Satires 7-9, Braund seeks to fit Book III into
the context of the earlier satires, and her general approach is helpful to readings of
Juvenal in general. She discusses the anger (indignatio) of Satires 1-6 in her first chapter,
and argues that in Book III the dominant mood changes to irony.
Courtney, E. A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal. London:
Athlone, 1980.
A close, line-by-line commentary, providing a rich wealth of detailed information
on each of Juvenal's satires, as well as sensible general comments.
Friedlaender, Ludwig. Friedlaender's Essays on Juvenal. Trans. John R. C. Martyn.
Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1969.
Friedlaender died in 1909, but he was a major figure of nineteenth-century
philology, and his essays on Juvenal's life and character and on his qualities as a satirist,
though general, are informative.
Highet, Gilbert. Juvenal the Satirist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954.
Highet's approach to Juvenal is now considered overly serious and moralistic, but
for twenty years his was the classic study of Juvenal, and it is still worth consulting, if
with some critical skepticism.
Highet, Gilbert. "Masks and Faces in Satire." Hermes 102,2 (1974): 321-37.
Argues strongly against the position that the speaker of Juvenal's satires ought to
be seen as a persona rather than Juvenal himself. After all, Horace displays many of the
same weaknesses and inconsistencies. "However, works which claim to be
autobiographical . . . we shall expect to be incomplete and partial, even distorted and
inconsistent; but we shall judge them to be the utterance of the author himself, and not a
persona or fictitious mouthpiece quite different from the author" (336).
Winkler, Martin M. The Persona in Three Satires of Juvenal. Hildesheim and New York: Olms,
1983.
Argues that the Juvenalian persona who vehemently hates women and effeminacy
is himself, along with those he attacks, a satiric victim. Includes an (unoriginal) chapter
on persona theory, and chapters on "the good old days" in Juvenal, on the tradition of the
persona in Roman satire (including he personae of Horace), on the satire of
homosexuality in Satires 2 and 9, and the satire of women in Satire 6.