Horatian Satire in Jonson's "On the Famous Voyage"

Abstract

The final poem in Ben Jonson's single book of Epigrammes (c. 1612), Famous Voyage has presented readers with special problems relative to its form, context, and subject-matter. On formal level, its massive length (at 196 lines, it is over four as long as second-largest poem in collec tion) and mock-heroic narrative render questionable its presence within vol ume of epigrams.1 On contextual level, its placement at end of Epigrammes lends it peculiar prominence which is further reinforced by its general failure to conform to alternating encomiastic and condemnatory structure of poems that precede it.2 And on level of content, many (perhaps most) readers have found it simply disgusting. The tale of two Lon doners who hire an open boat to row them up sewage-clogged Fleet Ditch for visit to Holbom whorehouse, Famous Voyage has been de nounced as hideous and unsavory burlesque,3 as the plunge of Parisian diver into cesspool,4 as morceau repugnant [de] grossierete rabelaisienne,5 and as any number of other unpleasant things. Typically, commentators on poem have sought to resolve these prob lems in ways that interfere with one another. Efforts to deal with question of form have tended to aggravate questions of context and content; at tempts to resolve question of context have exacerbated questions of content and form; and so forth. Peter Medine, for instance, has addressed impropriety of poem's subject-matter by casting it as a serious indictment of times in which it was written.6 This reading has advantage of ac counting for epigram's coprology in relatively dignified way, justifying it as traditional language of satirical condemnation. However, in quarter century since its appearance, Medine's reading has not achieved much popu larity, in large part because it so completely mistakes tone of Jonson's poem, which—as generations of readers have noted7—is more good natured8 than censorious, more playful than denunciatory. When Jonson