Search results for ""Author Juvenal""

Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member of the traditional land-owning class that was rapidly seeing power slip into the hands of outsiders, Juvenal also creates savage portraits of decadent aristocrats - male and female - seeking excitement among the lower orders of actors and gladiators, and of the jumped-up sons of newly-rich former slaves. Constantly comparing the corruption of his own generation with its stern and upright forebears, Juvenal's powers of irony and invective make his work a stunningly satirical and bitter denunciation of the degeneracy of Roman society

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Juvenal, writing between AD 110 and 130, was one of the greatest satirists of Imperial Rome. His powerful and witty attacks on the vices, abuses, and follies of the big city have been admired and used by many English writers, including Ben Jonson, Dryden, and most notably, Dr Johnson, who described his writing as `a mixture of gaiety and statelines, of pointed sentences and declamatory grandeur'. Juvenal has been seen as a stern moralist and, more recently, as an extravagant wit, and is acclaimed for his vivid description of the scenes which aroused his anger. He coined the famous phrase designating people `eager and anxious for two things; bread and races' (panem et circenses'). Niall Rudd's translation reproduces the original style and metrical effect of Juvenal's hexameters. William Barr's Introduction and Notes provide literary and historical background to the sixteen satires. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Mordant verse satire.The bite and wit of two of antiquity’s best satirists are captured in this Loeb Classical Library edition. Persius (AD 34–62) and Juvenal (writing about sixty years later) were heirs to the style of Latin verse satire developed by Lucilius and Horace, a tradition mined in Susanna Braund’s introduction and notes. Her notes also give guidance to the literary and historical allusions that pepper Persius’ and Juvenal’s satirical poems—which were clearly aimed at a sophisticated urban audience. Both poets adopt the mask of an angry man, and sharp criticism of the society in which they live is combined with flashes of sardonic humor in their satires. Whether targeting common and uncommon vices, the foolishness of prayers, the abuse of power by emperors and the Roman elite, the folly and depravity of Roman wives, or decadence, materialism, and corruption, their tone is generally one of righteous indignation. Juvenal and Persius are seminal as well as stellar figures in the history of satirical writing. Juvenal especially had a lasting influence on English writers of the Renaissance and succeeding centuries.

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