Week 7 Reading Journal Entry

What is “noble” according to Juvenal’s narrator? Cite a passage from each of the four satires by Juvenal which amused you and say why. What literary mechanisms or rhetorical devices did Juvenal use for each of these?

Juvenal describes wealth as essentially something immoral or bad, whereas Twain generally talks about how wealth affects relationships between people. Somehow, Twain appears less angry at the whole situation and Juvenal more open about his anger at the rich. The Hypocrisy can be seen in the fact that in Juvenal the rich are completely hypocritical about how they believe they are and how they actually act: they believe themselves to be so high above everyone else, yet they allow their artists to starve and they act essentially act foolish and uncivilized. In Twain, he satirizes the same things about the church: allowing their people to starve while they spend waistful amounts of money on useless things and the monks inside enjoy it. The themes of sedition and free speech in Juvenal appears to be the fact that no one has anything worthwhile to say when they do speak out, vs in Twain when people are generally crucified (generally in the non literal sense of the word) when speaking out. Both writers satirize the way in which artists and poets have lost their honor and kind of “sold out” to the patrons, and will do anything for money. According to Juvenal’s narrator, “noble” means more than your class, it is seen in every aspect of how you conduct your business and act in relation to your family and you also have to honor and celebrate god. Honestly, I have no passages that I can find that amused me, I found the entire piece rather dry and not amusing.