The Hidden Author
Subtitle: An Interpretation of Petronius's Satyricon (Sather Classical Lectures)
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: March 15, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780520207158
Subjects: Novels, other prose & writers; Plays & playwrights: classical, early & medieval; Satyricon; Petronius Arbiter.; Latin Literature; Satire And Humor; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Latin; Literary Criticism; Ancient Rome; Roman Literature; History / Ancient / General; History and criticism; In literature; Petronius Arbiter; Rome; Satire, Latin
First sentence: Let me warn you at once that I am going to adopt a curious critical strategy: I shall be interpreting a complete sequence of the Satyricon as if it were part of a text written in a pathetic and elevated style.
Description: Petronius's Satyricon is famous today primarily for the amazing banquet tale, "Trimalchio's Feast," also celebrated in Fellini's film, Satyricon. But this episode is only one part of the larger picture offered by the work.

In The Hidden Author, Professor Conte starts with the structure of the work as a whole, inviting the reader to appreciate the elements of irony and fantasy woven into the text. The author has hidden himself with the aim of striking at the vanity of the contemporary cultured scene, handing over his stage to his characters, who are living in various sorts of degradation, but who see themselves, in minds overactively appropriating a great literary heritage, as figures of mythic proportions.

In the foreground of Petronius's work can be seen the follies and excesses of the Rome of Nero's time; in the background, the outlines of the intellectual life of the early Empire.