<i>Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine</i> by Ritchie Robertson (review)

In this paper, the presence of food and dinners in connection with epic poetry in three different Juvenalian poems is discussed. The first is Satire 4 containing a mock-epic, the plot of which revolves around a giant turbot that is described with epic-style elements, and that is given to the emperor Domitian characterized by uncontrolled gluttony. The other two poems, Satires 5 and 11, both focusing on dinner parties, are in connection with the epic genre as well: while in the closing poem of Book 1, several epic connotations appear in the description of the gluttonous Virro’s extravagant dinner, in Satire 11, the enjoyment of epic poetry is praised and compared to an almost pornographic dance performance in a luxurious feast. Reading the three poems together, it might be proved from another aspect that we have to make a distinction between the Juvenalian evaluation of topics described using epic-style elements and the epic poetry itself.

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Mock-epic poetry and satire

The Cambridge History of Italian Literature ◽

10.1017/chol9780521434928.018 ◽

1997 ◽

pp. 310-311

Keyword(s):

Epic Poetry ◽

Mock Epic

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RITCHIE ROBERTSON, Mock-Epic Poetry from Pope to Heine.

Notes and Queries ◽

10.1093/notesj/gjs251 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 60 (1) ◽

pp. 155-155

Author(s):

M. Edson

Keyword(s):

Epic Poetry ◽

Mock Epic

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The Passion of Dido

10.1093/oso/9780198810810.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Gordon Braden

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

English Language ◽

Epic Poetry

This chapter’s discussion of translations of Book 4 of the Aeneid spans sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English renditions of Virgil, when England and the English language were becoming prominent on the European and global scene. There is a consistent self-consciousness in this effort of using Virgil as a vehicle for translatio imperii, but also in the search for an English metre and idiom which could adequately convey the epic gravity of the ancient epic poetry. Braden shows that while most of the translations of this era usually serve as the background to the most prominent of them, that of Dryden, they nonetheless are important for understanding how translation practices developed at that time. Book 4, in which the hero’s imperial mission is most seriously threatened, provides a focus of discussion of some key passages that illuminate the literary tendencies of that time.

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