Poetic Projection in Juvenal's Satires

Abstract

This article discusses how Juvenal's use of a particular female figure illuminates the destabilizing nature of his authorial voice. Her resemblance to the satirist calls into question Juvenal's effectiveness and purpose as a moralizing poet. This female "surrogate" satirist acts as a prism of meaning that simultaneously addresses the conventions of the genre and offers a window into Juvenal's complex mode of poetic self-representation. Juvenal's poetic projections present inconsistent perspectives that diffuse issues of sexual identity, class, and empire in the Satires . Juvenal's inconsistency ought not to be considered a form of indirection but a defining feature of his satire.