This volume presents a collection of pieces from a celebrated world-class scholar and interpreter of Latin poetry, focusing on the interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid. It forms the sequel to two widely ...influential earlier books on Virgil by the same author and translates and adds to a collection of papers published in Italian in 2002. Its central concern is the way in which Virgil reworks earlier poetry (especially that of Homer) at the most detailed level to produce very broad literary and emotional effects. Through detailed scholarly analysis, the book explores a central issue in Virgilian studies, that of how the Aeneid manages to create a new and effective mode of epic in a period when the genre appears to be debased or exhausted.
Virgil's Aeneid invites its reader to identify with the Roman nation whose origins and destiny it celebrates. But, as J. D. Reed argues in Virgil's Gaze, the great Roman epic satisfies this ...identification only indirectly--if at all. In retelling the story of Aeneas' foundational journey from Troy to Italy, Virgil defines Roman national identity only provisionally, through oppositions to other ethnic identities--especially Trojan, Carthaginian, Italian, and Greek--oppositions that shift with the shifting perspective of the narrative. Roman identity emerges as multivalent and constantly changing rather than unitary and stable. The Roman self that the poem gives us is capacious--adaptable to a universal nationality, potentially an imperial force--but empty at its heart. However, the incongruities that produce this emptiness are also what make the Aeneid endlessly readable, since they forestall a single perspective and a single notion of the Roman. Focusing on questions of narratology, intertextuality, and ideology, Virgil's Gaze offers new readings of such major episodes as the fall of Troy, the pageant of heroes in the underworld, the death of Turnus, and the disconcertingly sensual descriptions of the slain Euryalus, Pallas, and Camilla. While advancing a highly original argument, Reed's wide-ranging study also serves as an ideal introduction to the poetics and principal themes of the Aeneid.
Originally published in 1974. This book on comparative literature represents the first extended attempt to relate Dante's major allegorical mode to classical and medieval interpretations of epic ...poetry rather than to patristic biblical exegesis. Dante's Epic Journeys is also the first comprehensive explanation of Dante's enigmatic Ulysses. Thompson strives to shed new light not only on Dante's allegory—and thus upon the whole troubled question of exactly what an allegory was thought to be—but also on the intricate relationship between poet and poem and between Dante's spiritual journeys and his written representation of those itineraries.
"The message of Virgil's Aeneid once seemed straightforward enough: the epic poem returned to Aeneas and the mythical beginnings of Rome in order to celebrate the city's present world power and to ...praise its new master, Augustus Caesar. Things changed when late twentieth-century readers saw the ancient poem expressing their own misgivings about empire and one-man rule. In this timely book, David Quint depicts a Virgil who consciously builds contradiction into the Aeneid. The literary trope of chiasmus, reversing and collapsing distinctions, returns as an organizing signature in Virgil's writing: a double cross for the reader inside the Aeneid's story of nation, empire, and Caesarism."--Back cover
This study brings to light a history of English Renaissance Aeneids that has been lost from view. This book covers the period from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign to the start of the English Civil ...War, during which time there were thirteen authors who composed substantial translations of Virgil's epic. These translators include prominent literary figures - such as Richard Stanyhurst, Christopher Marlowe, and Sir John Harington - as well as scholars, schoolmasters, and members of parliament. Rather than simply viewing these Aeneids as scattered efforts preceding Dryden and the 'golden age' of Augustan translation, this book argues that these works represent a recognizable and important period of English classical translation. Drawing on manuscripts and printed sources, the book sketches a continuous portrait of the English Aeneid s as they developed through the ages of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I.
Founded upon more than a century of civil bloodshed, the first imperial regime of ancient Rome, the Principate of Caesar Augustus, looked at Rome's distant and glorious past in order to justify and ...promote its existence under the disguise of a restoration of the old Republic. In doing so, it used and revisited the history and myth of Rome's major success against external enemies: the wars against Carthage. This book explores the ideological use of Carthage in the most authoritative of the Augustan literary texts, the Aeneid of Virgil. It analyses the ideological portrait of Carthaginians from the middle Republic and the truth-twisting involved in writing about the Punic Wars under the Principate. It also investigates the mirroring between Carthage and Rome in a poem whose primary concern was rather the traumatic memory of Civil War and the subsequent subversion of Rome's Republican institutions through the establishment of Augustus' Principate.
This book is a systematic study of the importance of Greek tragedy as a fundamental 'intertext' for Vergil's Aeneid. Vassiliki Panoussi argues that the epic's representation of ritual acts, ...especially sacrifice, mourning, marriage, and maenadic rites, mobilizes a connection to tragedy. The tragic-ritual model offers a fresh look into the political and cultural function of the Aeneid, expanding our awareness of the poem's scope, particularly in relation to gender, and presenting new readings of celebrated episodes, such as Anchises' games, Amata's maenadic rites, Dido's suicide, and the killing of Turnus. She interprets the Aeneid as a work that reflects the dynamic nature of Augustan ideology, contributing to the redefinition of civic discourse and national identity. In her rich study, readers will find a unique exploration of the complex relationship between Greek tragedy and Vergil's Aeneid and a stimulating discussion of problems of gender, power, and ideology in ancient Rome.
In theAeneidmen, women, gods, and goddesses are characterized by the speeches assigned to them far more than by descriptions of their appearance or behavior. Most of the speeches are highly emotional ...and individualized, reminding us of the most powerful utterances of Greek tragedy.
Gilbert Highet has analyzed all the speeches in theAeneid, using statistical techniques as well as more traditional methods of scholarship. He has classified the speeches; identified their models in earlier Greek and Latin literature; analyzed their structure; and discussed their importance in the portrayal of character. He finds that Vergil used standard rhetorical devices with discretion, and that his models were poets rather than orators. Nevertheless, this study shows Vergil to have been a master dramatist as well as a great epic poet.
Originally published in 1972.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
At the end of the Thebaid, Statius enjoins his epic 'not to compete with the divine Aeneid but rather to follow at a distance and always revere its footprints'. The nature of the Thebaid's ...interaction with the Aeneid is, however, a matter of debate. This 2007 book argues that the Thebaid reworks themes, scenes, and ideas from Virgil in order to show that the Aeneid's representation of monarchy is inadequate. It also demonstrates how the Thebaid's fascination with horror, spectacle, and unspeakable violence is tied to Statius' critique of the moral and political virtues at the heart of the Aeneid. Professor Ganiban offers both a way to interpret the Thebaid and a largely sequential reading of the poem.
Walking through Elysium Myers, Micah Y; Gladhill, Bill
Walking through Elysium,
2020, 2020, 2020-04-02, Letnik:
LIX, 59.
eBook
Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil's underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the ...literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil's underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts. The essays in this volume speak to Vergil's incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil's underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil's underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.
