Inequality and Its Rhetorical Subversions: Satirical Monologue, Parody, and Narrative in Ancient Rome and the Antebellum South
Matthew J. Yoon
13/11/27
This paper examines how satire represented the boundaries between slavery and freedom in ancient Rome and the antebellum American South. Drawing on Gilbert Highet’s distinction among satirical monologue, parody, and narrative, it compares Juvenal’s Satire 3 with Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”; Horace’s Satires 2.8 with the African American tradition of the cakewalk; and Petronius’s Cena Trimalchionis with William Wells Brown’s Clotel. Through close analysis of these six texts and traditions, the paper identifies recurring rhetorical devices, including anaphora, the imitation of established cultural forms, and irony arising from the difference between what characters claim and what their actions reveal, while considering these similarities alongside the distinct historical circumstances in which the works were produced.
The comparison shows that similar rhetorical techniques could serve different social purposes. Roman satire frequently draws its humor from anxieties surrounding social mobility and the pretensions of those seeking elite status. Yet these works also turn irony back on their own speakers and observers, complicating any reading of them as straightforward defenses of privilege. By contrast, African American oratory, fiction, and performance use satire to expose the contradictions of a slaveholding society and challenge the authority of those who sustained it. For enslaved performers and formerly enslaved writers, indirect criticism could also challenge dominant institutions when open opposition risked punishment. The paper argues that Highet’s framework is useful for comparing the formal strategies of these traditions, but that understanding their purposes requires attention to the social position of their authors, their audiences, and the unequal conditions under which satire was produced.