Horace: Study Questions
1. Horace is very self-conscious about self-presentation both as a poet and as a character. What is the relationship between these versions of the self? Are these self images consistent? What do you make of Horace's self-praise and self-mockery, and of his personal presence in so many poems?2. Horace discusses his satire at some length in 1.4, 1.10, and 2.4. In particular, he locates his work in relation to that of Lucilius. What does he like and dislike about Lucilius? What functions does the Lucilius connection play in defining the nature of Horace's satire? What role does intertextuality-Horace's references to other texts and writers-play in his satire?
3. In 1.4 Horace also insists, perhaps ironically, that his satire is not poetry. Is he right? What qualities might lead one to think of the satires as poetic? What elements may lead Horace to deny their poetry (even if ironically)?
4. Horace's father, he claims, taught him virtue by pointing out bad examples, a practice he is carrying forward in his satires. Consider both the satiric functions both of the welter of minor figures (some historical, some not) and such major characters as the bore in 1.9 and Damasippus in 2.3. What are the ways in which Horace use character depiction to make a satiric point?
5. One character whom Horace does not satirize (or does he?) is Maecenas, his patron. What roles does Maecenas play in Horace's satires (and in his life)? Does Horace's praise of his patron suggest that there is a relationship between satire and panegyric?
6. In his "diatribe" satires (the first three satires of Book I) Horace speaks in what certainly seems to be his own voice. In others he establishes clear dramatic speakers. What are the ironic possibilities of both alternatives? Does Horace's procedure seem to change from Book I to Book II? To what extent is Horace's own voice ironic and are his dramatic speakers sincere?
7. A rather wide range of poems is included in what Horace called his sermones. Are they all satiric? Are we to assume that what Horace wrote defines the nature of satiric verse, or should we apply some external definition to make sensible distinctions? In the latter case, what definitions work?
8. Horace's satires are often thought of as groups or pairs. What groupings make sense to you? (We may want to discuss poems in pairs as a time-saving arrangement. What pairs should we use, and how what would pairing tell us about the poems themselves?) To what extent do these groupings supply a structure for the two books of satires?
9. Two standard (if controversial) complaints about Horace's satires are (1) that they are too bland to be interesting and (2) that Horace himself is merely a propagandist for Octavian/Augustus and his ideology. Whether you share these complaints or not, what are the arguments against them?
10. Are Horace's satires driven by any general, governing value or set of related values, or are they made up of random observations? If there is an underlying value, what is it, and how does it govern the satires?
Juvenal: Study Questions
1. A key issue debated by Juvenal scholars is the nature of the speaker. One school (exemplified by Highet) argues that, except for dramatized speakers (perhaps Umbricius in Satire 3) Juvenal speaks in his own voice, the voice of the moral teacher. Others (such as Anderson) argue that Juvenal should not be identified with the speaker, and that the poems may therefore be ironic. But if the speaker is ironic, how can we take his satire seriously? Is the character of the speaker consistent from work to work? What indications do the poems provide that we are not to take the speaker quite seriously?
2. Are Juvenal's satires merely disorganized diatribes, or is there some method to his anger? Are his poems satisfactorily organized by a central topic? Is there a logical progression of ideas? Do they hold together by association? Or is the disorder of his poems necessitated either by the force of his satiric anger or by the chaotic world they describe? Satire 6 is perhaps the most problematic of the poems in its structure (or lack thereof).
3. Satire 6 is problematic in other respects as well. It is certainly not politically correct, and it introduces the topic of satiric misogyny. Is the poem just a collection of masculine stereotypes about women, or should we see the behavior of women as symptomatic of society s lack of values? There are very few women satirists: is satire a patriarchal genre, and is its patriarchal character particularly exemplified by Satire 6?
4. If Juvenal s attack on women is politically incorrect, his treatment of Greeks in Satire 3 seems similarly unfair. Some of the questions we might ask about women can be asked about Greeks as well. What does Umbricius have against Greeks? What role does his attack on Greeks play in his larger attack on Rome? Is satire likely to lead to the kind of global attack that we associate with racial stereotyping, and it so, why? Is satiric attack (at least in this case) immune from complaints about its political correctness? If so, why?
5. Beyond the presence of Greeks, what does Umbricius have against Rome? Are its faults particularly characteristic of urban life, or of society in general? What makes him think that life will be better in the country? Why don t his arguments convince Juvenal, who stays in Rome at the end, when Umbricius leaves?
6. One quality many readers detect in Satire 10 is its claustrophobic effect, its sense that no one can escape from the fact that nothing can be done. (Johnson's version creates that effect equally powerfully.) How is that effect achieved? Do you interpret the ending of the poem as a solution to the problem or as a final reinforcement that the problem is insoluble?