Name: IANA LIMA CORDEIRO

Publication date: 27/06/2019
Advisor:

Name	Role
LENI RIBEIRO LEITE	Advisor *

Examining board:

Name	Role
LENI RIBEIRO LEITE	Advisor *
RAIMUNDO NONATO BARBOSA DE CARVALHO	Internal Examiner *

Summary: This dissertation analyzes the construction of the ethos of the poetic persona in
Roman satirist Juvenal’s Satires. Because of the scarcity of empirical
biographical information about this author’s life, along with the perception of a
tone oscillation throughout his texts, there has been some dissent among the
scholars who have studied his work. From the understanding of the historical
context in which the poet lived and the observance of satire’s literary
characteristics, visible not only in Juvenal’s poetry but also in that of his
predecessors’, we discuss two great perspectives among his critics: the
biographical reading and the adoption of a poetic persona as an analytical tool –
and, intrinsically connected to both, the perceivable tone variance that exists in
his work. The result to our own reading of the Satires, along with our weighing of
the different arguments on the matter presented to us by several authors, is that
there is, in Juvenal’s work, a constructed ethos so solid and cohesive that our
statement on the matter is that there is only one poetic persona in his work and
the tone variance should not be considered more relevant than the recurring
themes in his Satires. Thus, our analysis of what aspects compose the satirical
voice is based on the consistent statements he displays throughout his work
about certain themes. Our results are organized in four categories: a) the satire’s
poet; b) condemnation of wealth; c) about women and d) decaying of society. We
conclude, therefore, that this satirist constructs his ethos as a Roman citizen
whose only alternative, as an expression to his indignation towards his
contemporaries’ vicious behavior, is writing satires, and who also perceives this
moral corruption as both the cause and the consequence of an irreversible social
decadency.
KEY-WORDS: Juvenal. Roman Satire. Ethos. Poetic Persona.

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