JUVENAL, — Satire 6. Edited by L. Watson and P. Watson.

Cambridge University Press, 2014, XIII,320p. Paperback. Nice copy. Like new. 'The poem gets appropriate and up-to-date treatment as a satiric performance shaped by social traditions and trends. The Introduction, a valuable resource, organizes discussion so as to put familiar issues in new light. For example, the section on Juvenal's 'Life and /work' dovetails from (flimsy) biographical information to a discussion of the poet's education and literary culture as reflected in his style. Several other sections dealing with the poem itself ('Juvenal's Anti-Matrona', 'Misogyny in Literature', 'Persona') progressively construct a historical and cultural framework for reading the satirist's misogynic rhetoric. The rhetoric itself is 'altogether literary and tralaticious', but the speaker's distress and preoccupations are shaped by the complex realities and attitudes of imperial Roman society. He is an extreme traditionalist, 'represent[ing] as normative what is in actuality quite exceptional' (40). Obsessed with those faded norms of female behaviour and with the marital ideal of 'concordia', he is bound to find endless provocations to 'discordia' in this world where many women are more visible, free and influential than he would like and even his fellow men have evolved. Thus Watson and Watson extend the work of late twentieth-century persona studies, which objectified the satiric speaker but did not explore how that speaker might be engaging with specific historical condition.s W. and W. illuminate the poem's thematic coherence and purposeful composition, without denying the stream-of-consciousness effect of the presentation. (...) A separate section ('Juvenal's style') walks through the twenty-one lines on the Bona-Dea rites, identifying elements of rhetoric and diction; this will be very useful for students. In other sections, readers are treated to an economical and up-to-date history of satire studies, an account of the questions and hypotheses relating to the 'Oxford fragment' and an outline of Juvenal's nearly 700-line text. (...) The commentary provides extensive interpretive context and models nuanced analysis of passages. (...) This excellent team of authors shows that fresh consideration and contextualization of Juvenalian satire can still lead to new discoveries, and raises hopes for future volumes in the same vein.' (CATHERINE KEANE in The Journal of Roman Studies, 2015, pp.439-440).