To browse Academia. The thesis examines the female characters in The Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter in order to determine what they may tell about the ways in which the Roman aristocratical elite of the 1st-century imperial Rome thought about the social status and role of women, as well as the ways in which dominant representations of femininity and, by extension, masculinity were constructed, subverted or perpetuated in Menippean satirical discourse.
It starts with offering an insight into the laws and gender norms that constituted the formal and informal frameworks within which women of the Neronian Rome were able to actualize themselves as political, economic, social and cultural subjects.
It then turns to the brief analysis of relevant data concerning The Satyricon as the selected historical record: its authorship, date, literary tradition, extant scope and plot. An exhaustive discussion on literary theoretical and critical approaches and concepts that may inform our critical understanding of The Satyricon as a Menippean satire is then conducted with the ultimate goal of identifying discoursive literary strategies with which Petronius makes The Satyricon a culturally intelligible piece of literature in relation to the literary tradition and the socio-cultural context in which it is situated.
In this regard, two main discoursive strategies are identified as relevant and as such thorougly examined: the syncretistic parody of various ancient literary genres and the critique of what was seen as socially undesirable, shamful and harmful patterns of belief, thought and behaviour through the lens of satyrical stereotypes. The concept of a satirical stereotype is then more thorougly observed as a discursive category of meaning that may in a specific way articulate gender as a discursive regulatory category and it in this respect, seven Petronian satyrical stereotypes of female behaviour are identified: the nymphomaniac, the gold-digger, the adulteress, the drunkard, the feeble-minded, the vixen and the superstitian.
A closer look is then taken at each female character constituting the respective satyrical stereotypes in order to examine subtle nuances in Petronius' cultural assumptions about the social status and role of women. By taking into account the concept of gender relationality, and in order to assess to what extent gender really was at play in critiquing patterns of belief, thought and behaviour inhabited by the satirically stereotypical female characters, the thesis then singles out all male characters in The Satyricon that exhibit the same cognitive-behavioural patterns and thoroughly analyzes them as a control group.
