The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying Catherine Keane Maria Plaza . The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire: Laughing and Lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. x, 370. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-928111-4. This book presents a comparative anatomy of humor strategies in Horace, Persius, and Juvenal. Plaza argues that humor is a site of the paradoxes and tensions of the satiric genre, and specifically its repeated failure to deliver the satisfying, morally justified criticism it promises. This idea has appeared in politically and culturally oriented interpretations of satire, and this book's text and notes are packed with summaries, evaluations, and syntheses of such studies. Plaza, however, focuses on words, images, and their intended effects on a reader of unspecified cultural background. In the introduction, Plaza observes that relatively few scholars of Roman satire have drawn on humor theory, or even treated humor as a generic element to analyze in itself. She explicates several ancient and modern theories and integrates them with the persona theory of Kernan and his followers. The latter is more or less the dominant paradigm in Roman satire studies, but as Plaza rightly notes, in some ways it is still incomplete and [End Page 111] misleading. Her own argument makes good use of Kernan's original ideas: she proposes that the "paradoxes" of the persona and of self-undermining programmatic jokes should direct us to look not for the poets' real opinions, but for multiple impulses and strategies of humor throughout their satire. These do not balance one another harmoniously but form a genre-defining "dynamic whirlpool" (22). The three main chapters deal with distinct types of humor: "object-oriented" (ch. 1), "persona-oriented" or self-undermining (ch. 2), and "non-aligned," that is, humor that seems tangential to a satire's message (ch. 3). In each chapter, Plaza treats the three satirists in turn, developing interpretations of select images and poems that reflect particular types of humor. Her readings point to many interesting patterns, such as the satirists' tendency to depict their objects as elevated or inflated before attacking them, and the meaningful play between positive and negative images of the persona. At times, however, the reviews of secondary literature and repeated cross-referencing slow the discussion down and diminish the impact of Plaza's conclusions. In Plaza's diachronic account of the Roman genre, satire initially makes the ambiguous persona a frequent target of humor, but gradually focuses more on external targets. Non-aligned humor remains, but skips a generation; it does not fit Persius' program of "moral-philosophical improvement of society and mankind" (302). Although is it certainly difficult to fit Persius into any mold, it is disappointing to see him disappear from the last third of the book in this way, bearing the old label of earnest teacher. Juvenal's satire is also summed up with a surprising label: the poet held a "deterministic world-view" (126). More appealingly, Plaza also perceives in Juvenal a fascination with the power of "monsters" who inspire both horror and awe. The last satirist creates a universe that reflects satire's exploration of extremes and cultivates an "apocalyptic" mood (306). Plaza occasionally invokes the European novel as the genre that inherits Juvenal's vision and his strategies of non-aligned humor. At times this book disappoints both as an analysis of humor per se and as an analysis of the satirists. Satiric humor is indeed under-theorized, but Plaza's solution seems incomplete. If humor can be called dangerous or tension-filled, it must (at least sometimes) have something to do with what lies outside the text. But this study does not have much to say about satire's multifaceted cultural and political commentary, or the contexts of its individual authors. Some references are made as part of exposition, not interpretation, as exemplified by the casual and inaccurate reference to the Caesar in Horace 2.1 as "Augustus" (41). Regarding more mechanical matters, despite the exhaustive survey of secondary literature throughout, there were some surprising omissions from the bibliography (e.g., F. Bellandi, Etica Diatribica e Protesta Sociale nelle Satire di Giovenale [Bologna 1980...