The betrayal of the satirical text

Literary scholars use various methods to undermine and reject explicit declarations of the Roman verse satire. This paper argues that not only do these scholars develop some strategies to avoid facing uncomfortable messages, but that the satirical text also offers an opportunity to subvert its own utterances. Although the dialogic nature of literature (and language in general) always offers opportu-nities for subversive interpretations that refuse to accept the proclaimed ideas at face value, the satirical text has a special feature, since it tends to say what it says with some ambiguity. The paper calls this the betrayal of the satirical text, which through the very act of (humorous) textualization opens the gates for opposing or subverting interpretations. The second part of the paper analyses Satires 1.7 by Horace, underscoring how various implications of the poetic discourse create opportunities to undermine the proffered ideas. A text that seems to try to stabilize Roman elite identity may lead to a retracing of the boundaries between Romans and aliens, the elite and the pariahs

Mikszáth kurucai

Mikszáth kuruc narratívá

The Death and the Revival of the Author

The most influential trends in 20th century literary criticism and theory of literature can be described as revolting against a both Romantic and positivist approach which focused on the person of the author rather than his or her literary product. Formalism New Criticism structuralism and post-structuralism denied any importance of the biographical author and dealt with texts exclusively. After the Barthesian formulation of the death of the author ( applauded by towering figures like Foucault or Derrida) the end of the 20th and even more the beginning of the 21st centuries have brought back the importance of the author. For some new trends (especially in post-colonial and gender studies) the personal or even the bodily experience of the biographical author seems the most important aspect of literature which is (again) the expression of a personal experience which is however not of personal but of social interest. The revival of the author as refusal to look at literature as a self-centered play should not deny the importance of close reading or textual analysis since the intellectual capital collected by 20th century literary criticism is still worth applying