Articles

Comparing Social Inequality in the Satyrica and Egalia's Daughters

Authors

  • Jennifer A Rea

Abstract

This paper examines themes of social oppression in Petronius’s Satyrica and Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalia’s Daughters. Both the Cena Trimalchionis and Egalia’s Daughters depict comic situations in which non-privileged members of society, Trimalchio in the Satyrica and the character Petronius Bram in Egalia’s Daughters, imitate the behaviors associated with the more privileged strata of society. When Brantenberg’s Petronius reverses social convention, his world becomes as ridiculous as Trimalchio’s universe. Brantenberg’s satire, I argue, transforms a central theme of the Cena – the distress of the freedmen at their inability to gain power and a socially acceptable identity – into a dialogue about social inequality between the sexes.

Dr. Jennifer Rea is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Florida.  She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsinin 1999 and her MA from Indiana University at Bloomington.  Her areas of specialty are Augustan Age Literature and Roman Topography.  Her first book, Legendary Rome, will be published by Duckworth.

Published

2006-12-01

Issue

Section

Articles