Juvenal and the Satiric Emotions

In his sixteen Satires, the Roman poet Juvenal explores the emotional provocations and pleasures associated with social criticism and mockery, drawing on a diverse array of Greco-Roman treatments of the emotions. But as Keane shows, the satiric emotions are not found only in the author's rhetorical performances; they are also at the centre of the human farrago that the Satires purport to treat. As he paints human experience and conflict from many angles, Juvenal explores the dynamic operation of emotions in society.