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Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

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MARTIAL AND JUVENAL<br />

derision. Juvenal — the Juvenal, predominantly, of Satires i to 6 — allows us<br />

no moral respite, no refuge from his questions. Yet despite his treachery <strong>and</strong><br />

deceptions — <strong>and</strong> one of them is pretending that the experience is literary, that<br />

all is words <strong>and</strong> rhetoric, a commodity made to please — despite his peevish<br />

aggression, towards the reader <strong>and</strong> his values, his uncharitable arrogance,<br />

something emerges which is tenuously hopeful, potentially constructive — the<br />

plain idea that honesty, though nasty, even vile, can direct us past appearances<br />

to see truths that live within. Contact may be sickening, when facades are<br />

stripped away: but interior truths once recognized, amendment can begin.<br />

623<br />

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

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