Petronio, Sat. 116: el ‘diálogo’ intertextual entre novela y épica

In Petronius, Satyricon 116, which works as a type of prologue to the Croton episode, there is a ‘dialogue’ between the novelistic genre (Petronius) and epic (Virgil and Homer). The article analyzes the function of this ‘dialogue’ in Petronius’ framework in terms of the ‘parodic transformation’ of the epic base-text, both the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The parodic transformation achieved by inverting and undermining the epic base-text (Virgil) is a vehicle, in turn, for the transformation of the base-text on the macro-level (Homer), which was, in turn, Virgil’s model.