Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) - front matter (original) (raw)
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To borrow a few words from Seneca's famous line about Virgil's Georgics , the present volume has no grand ambitions 'to instruct' , though it does aim to achieve more than just 'to delight readers'. 1 As its title suggests, this collection has two central objectives: fi rst, to generate thoughtful new readings of the Georgics which refl ect the major scholarly concerns and activities of Virgilian studies since the turn of the twenty-fi rst century; and second, to present innovative and heretofore underutilized perspectives-approaches, interpretive methods, and ways of reading the Georgics-which we hope will promote further explorations of the poem. In the years following the publication of Katharina Volk's Vergil's Georgics: Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (2008)-itself a very refl ective work gathering ten classic essays written between 1970 and 1999-there has been no shortage of provocative and worthwhile studies of the Georgics , many of which have signifi cantly advanced our understanding of the poem. Th e aim of this introduction is to show that the recent developments and emergent trends in Georgics criticism have not only helped to crystallize the content, organization and aspirations of the present volume, but also fundamentally underpin our vision of how Virgil's poem might be read and continuously renewed. For us, what is most absorbing and impressive about the Georgics is the breadth of its intellectual activity, the richness and depth of the poem's engagement with its creative environment, and the myriad ways in which the poem is refl ected in the works of others. Th is collection of essays strives to capture this image of Virgil's poem, and in doing so seeks to expand on scholarly understanding of what the Georgics says about its subject matter, its medium and its time. As we hope to show throughout this introduction and the rest of the book, the Georgics actively invites refl ections on the relationship between reader and addressee, content and meaning, message and medium, idealism and reality. Indeed, we take the view that the poem's exploration of these relationships lies at the heart of its inexhaustible interpretive possibilities. In what follows, we will make a case for seeing recent developments in scholarship on the Georgics as a direct result of critics' increasing sensitivity to the poem's frequent and multifarious self-refl ections. Th e proliferation of metapoetic and allegorical readings of Virgil's agricultural didaxis ; the expansion of the corpus of intertexts with which the Georgics is thought to interact; the understanding that Virgil's 'middle poem' encapsulates and negotiates with contemporary socio-political changes; and the growing recognition that throughout the history of its reception the Georgics has acted as a prism through which later authors, critics and translators have engaged in self-representation and self-defi nition: these major shift s in the scholarly Scholarly approaches to the Georgics in the twentieth and twenty-fi rst century At the risk of repeating what has been said well and extensively by others, we begin with a brief overview of the scholarship on the Georgics in order to draw out the major shift s in the study of the poem which have shaped our thinking. 2 Modern scholarship on Virgil's Georgics was injected with fresh energy in the 1970s, which saw the publication of a number of still-infl uential studies; and this verve for diversifying the interpretation of the Georgics has not only sustained itself but even intensifi ed in subsequent decades. Th e methodologies adopted by the so-called 'Harvard School' of Virgilian critics in conceiving their pessimistic readings of the Aeneid , which emerged in the 1950s and came into their own in the mid-1960s, began to be applied to the study of the Georgics in the 1970s-a delay that testifi es to the poem's secondary status within the Virgilian oeuvre in the eyes of critics. 3 Th e deeply melancholic and even despondent tenor of 1970s American scholarship on the Georgics , exemplifi ed by Michael Putnam's Virgil's Poem of the Earth (1979), stands in sharp contrast to the earlier, more optimistic views of the poem emanating mainly from the works of two German scholars: Virgils Georgica (1963 = 1967: 175-363) by Friedrich Klingner; and Der Anspruch des Dichters in Vergils Georgika (1972) by Vinzenz Buchheit. 4 Broadly speaking, early optimistic readings maintain that Virgil's poem celebrates the dignity of the agricultural life and professes a hope for the arrival of an Italian Golden Age under Octavian; whereas later pessimistic readings, which ostensibly took hold of Anglophone scholarship on the Georgics in the 1980s and 1990s, tend to stress the harsh realities of life in the Iron Age, the futility of human toil, and the problems and uncertainties surrounding the rise of Octavian. 5 Th is divergence between (American or Anglophone) pessimism and (European) optimism is arguably less pronounced, but still detectable in two of the major commentaries on Virgil's Georgics , both of which were conceived in the 1980s: the two-volume English commentary by Richard Th omas (1988) , and the two-part German study by Manfred Erren, completed over the course of eighteen years (Band 1, 1985 ; Band 2, 2003). 6 Th e commentary of Roger Mynors, which appeared in 1990 , judiciously sidesteps the question throughout. Emerging from the shadow of this 'optimistic versus pessimistic' debate, a number of critics, such as Christine Perkell (Th e Poet's Truth , 1989) and Monica Gale (Virgil on the Nature of Th ings , 2000), have attempted to steer clear of both sets of readings by arguing that the Georgics is fi xated on life's inherent complexities and unsolvable ambiguities; but their conclusions in the end oft en appear more pessimistic than not. 7 On the other hand, revisionist optimistic readings have also begun to materialize: the study by Llewelyn Morgan (Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics , 1999), for instance, as its title implies, sought to frame the poem's troubling images of destruction as having a 'constructive
Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics (London / New York: Bloomsbury, 2019)
2019
For legal purposes the Preface on p. x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Chrysanthemums and Horsefl y (colour woodblock print about 1833-34), Katsushika Hokusai. Getty Images. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Prose into Poetry: Tradition and Meaning in Virgil’s Georgics
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Past, Present, and Future in Virgil's Georgics
Augustan Poetry and the Roman Republic, 2013
I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.
The Virgil Encyclopedia: Preface, Notes to the Reader, and Acknowledgments
2014
"Featuring some 2,500 entries contributed by top literary scholars, The Virgil Encyclopedia represents the first comprehensive reference volume to be published in English on Virgil, a poet whose works and thoughts have been at the center of Western literary, cultural, artistic, and pedagogical traditions for more than two millennia."
The laudes Galli at the end of Virgil’s Georgics: an endless debate, "Eranos" 113, 2022, pp. 61-88
The age-old controversy as to the laudes Galli at the end of Virgil’s Georgics is examined in the light of a recent paper: putting the elimination of verses dedicated by Virgil to his friend in the context of the events which caused Gallus’ downfall and the emotional reactions to his death, affords a different perspective and allows a fresh discussion of some of the more complex and delicate aspects of the question. Key words: laudes Galli; Servian notices; Orpheus; ending of the Georgics; trial and death of Gallus.
Virgil’s Georgics and the Art of Reference
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. N 1942 Pasquali published a brief but important article on the way in which poets allude to their predecessors, a process which he named arte allusiva. Although this was the first work to confront the issue as an artistic phenomenon, it needs to be said that certain studies had already investigated individual instances of allusion;2 and since Pasquali, the investigation has been carried on, although not perhaps as extensively as the subject deserves.3 The focus of all these studies is Hellenistic poetry, which has been shown to demonstrate a certain type of allusion, namely, the use of a dictional oddity whose sense is to be recovered only by having recourse to the imitated passage, from which it will normally diverge in any number of ways-a practice generally referred to as oppositio in imitando, but which I shall call "correction."4 Most of the work done in this area treats the interplay between the Alexandrians, chiefly Callimachus and Apollonius, and the Homeric text, although Giangrande in particular has examined lateral activity within Alexandria; so, on a fairly simple level, where Callimachus has 'E4~iprvSq8 (H. 4.42) and Algovrle0v (Aet. 1.7), Apollonius will give us 'E4noprOEv (Arg. 4.1212) and AiloovrlvsE An earlier form of this paper was delivered in February 1985 at Columbia University, where useful comments were made by Professors R. C. M. Janko and P. E. Knox. I am indebted to Professor R. J. Tarrant for detailed criticism and advice. 1G. Pasquali, "Arte allusiva," Italia che scrive 25 (1942) 185-187 (= Stravaganze quarte e supreme [Venice 1951] 11-20).