Joyce’s relation with the Roman tradition includes the writer’s connections with Petronius Arbiter, the supposed author of the Satyricon, one of the most experimental novels of Latin literature. Beyond the overt reference in Ulysses (“Oxen of the Sun”) to the tale of the Widow of Milesia, Joyce and Petronius share a re-writing of the myth of Odysseus and of the epic model, which questions any closed and objective system of knowledge. The two works also present similar modalities of perspectical fragmentation in narrative and overlapping of genres, which break the conventions of their respective times, thus opening the way to an anti-systemic epistemological model (Deleuze) based on failure and continuous re-signification. Such a re-discussion of the possibility to experience and represent an “objective” world pertains also the XXth century Italian author who has most consistently drawn on both Petronius’ and Joyce’s experiments in narrative. Carlo Emilio Gadda in La cognizione del dolore transforms the idea of knowledge into an awareness of the final imperscrutability of reality, which is represented by him in its chaotic fragmentation and as not re-composable into a coherent system of significance. This refusal of a unifying principle of knowledge is reflected in the three authors’ similar work on language which, by emphasizing the combinatory and multi-levelled nature of words, reveals a potentially infinite semantic multiplication. Petronius’ innovative contamination of written Latin with oral language and Greek words, also coincides with a “mimetic realism” (Auerbach) which reproduces a stratified and diversified employment of language. Similarly, Gadda’s intent to “stretch, contract, metastasize” (“Lingua letteraria e lingua dell’uso”) language reflects an emphasis on the sediments active in words which draws him close to Joyce for their common process of transformation of their native languages into malleable instruments of communication which portray an ever-moving reality.
Transmuting Languages: the Re-definition of Realism from Petronius to Joyce and Gadda
PRUDENTE, Teresa
2008-01-01
Abstract
Joyce’s relation with the Roman tradition includes the writer’s connections with Petronius Arbiter, the supposed author of the Satyricon, one of the most experimental novels of Latin literature. Beyond the overt reference in Ulysses (“Oxen of the Sun”) to the tale of the Widow of Milesia, Joyce and Petronius share a re-writing of the myth of Odysseus and of the epic model, which questions any closed and objective system of knowledge. The two works also present similar modalities of perspectical fragmentation in narrative and overlapping of genres, which break the conventions of their respective times, thus opening the way to an anti-systemic epistemological model (Deleuze) based on failure and continuous re-signification. Such a re-discussion of the possibility to experience and represent an “objective” world pertains also the XXth century Italian author who has most consistently drawn on both Petronius’ and Joyce’s experiments in narrative. Carlo Emilio Gadda in La cognizione del dolore transforms the idea of knowledge into an awareness of the final imperscrutability of reality, which is represented by him in its chaotic fragmentation and as not re-composable into a coherent system of significance. This refusal of a unifying principle of knowledge is reflected in the three authors’ similar work on language which, by emphasizing the combinatory and multi-levelled nature of words, reveals a potentially infinite semantic multiplication. Petronius’ innovative contamination of written Latin with oral language and Greek words, also coincides with a “mimetic realism” (Auerbach) which reproduces a stratified and diversified employment of language. Similarly, Gadda’s intent to “stretch, contract, metastasize” (“Lingua letteraria e lingua dell’uso”) language reflects an emphasis on the sediments active in words which draws him close to Joyce for their common process of transformation of their native languages into malleable instruments of communication which portray an ever-moving reality.
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