The Descent of Satire from Old Comedy to the Gothic

In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Lucius’ transformation into an ass precipitates a change not only in shape but also in status, as he falls from his rank as aristocrat to beast of burden. His metamorphosis robs him of both his human body and his human voice: “deprived of both human gesture and speech” (humano gestu simul et voce privatus), he can express himself only with a donkey’s pout and sidelong glance (3.25). Yet despite his lack of speech, he repeatedly - albeit unsuccessfully - attempts to communicate with those around him.

In this paper I consider Apuleius' allusions to Persius' Satires at Metamorphoses 1.3-4. I intend to demonstrate how references to Persius' Stoic brand of satire characterize the speech of Lucius, the Metamorphoses' protagonist, as morally vacuous. Although Keulen (2007) pointed out echoes of Persius in his commentary on Metamorphoses I and Gowers (2001) read the prologue alongside Persius, there has been no reading of the allusions in this scene collectively.

Matthew Lewis scandalized England in 1796 when he published The Monk, a macabre and wildly-popular Gothic novel filled with murder, incest, lascivious monks and satanic seduction. Among Lewis’s next works was something quite different: a long verse imitation of the thirteenth Satire of Juvenal, The Love of Gain (1799), in which he augmented the Roman poet’s work with all manner of Gothic paraphernalia – storms, demons, nocturnal terrors, psychological and religious conflict, and the lurid description of crime.

Juvenal begins Satire 14, perhaps the most neglected poem in his corpus, with the assertion that parents hand down folly and vice to their descendants through their living example (Plurima sunt, Fuscine, et fama digna sinistra/ et nitidis maculam haesuram figentia rebus,/ quae monstrant ipsi pueris traduntque parentes, 14.1-3). Previous commentators have elucidated how the staleness of Juvenal’s moral sentiments in Satire 14 undercuts the poem’s ethical considerations (Corn; cf.

When in Satire 1.4 Horace finally raises questions concerning the status of his poetic project and where it does (and does not) fit into a standing system of genres, his argument presents more problems than it dispels (for the anti-Aristotlean nature of the argument see Freudenburg 1993: 119-128; for Horace’s ironizing use of word arrangement (dispositio) see Anderson 1982: 23-25; Oberhelman and Armstrong 1995: 243 contrast Horatian and Ennian dispositio).