Abstract
In a deliberately circular manner, this article reads ›Neronian‹ literature in general and Petronius’ Satyricon in particular through the lens of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in order to suggest that this reading can profitably be applied to conceptualizing the role of picaresque narratives in the 20th and 21th Century culture. It begins by using the notion of satura as a metaphor for the preoccupation with oversaturation evident in both satirical (Persius’ Satires and Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis) and patently non-satirical (Seneca’s tragedies and Lucan’s De bello civili) texts of ›Neronian‹ literature. It then offers a cursory discussion of a few central episodes of the Satyricon while arguing that Petronius’ proto-picaresque account of a journey though the culturally oversaturated landscape of the Roman Empire results in the disturbing image of an imprisonment in the nightmare of the never-ending carnival.
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