Petronius’ Satyrica:
Readings, Rationales, Reception

Although Petronius’ Satyrica has greatly influenced subsequent writers ancient and modern (cf., e.g., West, ed., Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby), very little work has been done to consider the cultural, literary, and political contexts of readings of the Satyrica and its reception. This panel presents four papers that look at aspects of the reading and reception of the Satyrica, in later Roman writers and in modern American and European contexts. Paper 1, “Ecphrasis, Spectacle and Vision: Poetic Reception of the Satyrica in Martial and Statius,” discusses the paradigm of Neronian viewing established in Petronius as received and interpreted in the poetry of Martial and Statius, and seeks to assess to what extent Neronian visuality was recuperated, and how successfully, by Martial and Statius. Paper 2, “Narrators Ancient and Modern: Petronius’ Satyrica and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,” considers the role of the narrator in Petronius and Fitzgerald, arguing that the closest parallel between the two texts is in fact their mode of narration, and detailing how, despite some differences, Encolpius is in many ways the direct ancestor of Nick Carraway. Paper 3, “Anti-Petronian Elements in The Great Gatsby,” argues that, despite the explicit parallel between Trimalchio and Gatsby, The Great Gatsby as a whole, as well as Gatsby himself, is rather an anti-Satyrica, and Gatsby himself, despite his failure to win Daisy and his inevitable downfall, endures, unlike Trimalchio, as a glorious, if tragic, comment on the human spirit. Paper 4, “Bakhtin and Petronius’ Satyrica,” analyzes how Mikhail Bakhtin’s nuanced understanding of satirical laughter as distinguished from carnival laughter illuminates key passages in the Satyrica, and argues that such Bakhtinian analysis creates a logic for the narrative interplay of these two elements, as well as putting into sharp focus the moral and social emptiness of the literary landscape Petronius was creating.

The panel will conclude with a response by a scholar who has published extensively on Petronius and is familiar with the reception issues addressed by the papers in this panel.