Making Men Ridiculous: Juvenal and the Anxieties of the Individual by Christopher Nappa (review)

• Autores: Evelyn Adkins
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 1, 2019, págs. 148-149
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Christopher Nappa offers a new reading of Juvenal's Satires that moves beyond persona theory to examine how the author and his works simultaneously critique and participate in what he fears is the decline of traditional, elite Roman masculinity. Through an extended close reading of Satire 1, he shows how Juvenal undermines himself and his works by: participating in the literary culture he critiques, yearning for the wealth and status of those he attacks for gaining these through unorthodox means such as gender and class inversion, and saying that he will use anger to compensate for a lack of poetic talent. While at times this book would have benefitted from a stronger theoretical background, particularly in Roman gender and sexuality, and more sustained discussion of the implied effects of Imperial autocracy on concepts of masculinity forged during the Republic, Nappa's reading of the Satires makes thought-provoking connections between wealth, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and Juvenal's experience of Rome's Imperial government.