The Millionaire's Dinner Party: An Adaptation of the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius - Softcover

Millionaire's Dinner Party. An Adaptation of the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius.

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Buchbeschreibung kart. / Paperback. Zustand: Gut. Illustrated. 95 Seiten / p., Abb. Altersgemäß tadelloser Zustand / Age impeccable condition - Introduction -- This book is an adaptation of the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius. The Cena is one incident from a long novel called the Satyricon of which only fragments survive. These fragments, probably from books 14, 15, and 16. fill 134 pages in translation in the Penguin Classics. The complete work may have been ten times longer than this. The plot of this immense book centres round the adventures of the narrator, Encolpius. He is a drifter, who wanders from place to place with no visible means of support, continually involved in disreputable escapades, an anti-hero who evokes no admiration but a certain sympathy. As far as we can tell, his wanderings began at Marseilles, from which he was exiled. From there he sailed to Italy and, probably after a visit to Rome, he arrived at the Bay of Naples. It is here that the surviving portion of the book begins, in the town of Puteoli, a popular and fashionable seaside resort and a leading commercial centre. -- Here he meets Ascyltos, a student, with whom he shares lodgings. In the first surviving fragment he has been attending a lecture on rhetoric and is fulminating against the inadequacies of modern education. The professor, Agamemnon, overhears his tirade and is impressed by his eloquence. It is he who procures for Encolpius and Ascyltos the invitation to dinner with the millionaire Trimalchio. -- The Satyricon is unique in ancient literature, although its antecedents are fairly clear. Its form is partly derived from a type of satire invented by Varro ( fl.c. 60 B.C. ) ; he wrote, amongst other things, one hundred and fifty books of humorous essays, attacking contemporary foibles and vices, in a mixture of prose and verse. Petronius changed the form radically by reducing the proportion of verse (the Cena contains very little verse) and by linking the incidents and satirical themes round the adventures of a single character and giving the work a continuous plot. -- Moreover, if the object of satire is to ridicule the follies and vices of mankind, Petronius intention is not exclusively, or even predominantly, satirical. There is no indignation in Petronius; he laughs but does not moralize. For instance, the theme of the ostentatious dinner party given by a vulgar and uneducated host is treated more scathingly by other satirists before and after Petronius ( Horace and Juvenal ) . The reader is likely to find Trimalchio not disgusting but simply funny. ISBN 9780199120253 Sprache: Englisch Gewicht in Gramm: 195. Artikel-Nr. 1227855

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