Virgil's Experience: Nature and History: Times, Names, and PlacesThis book studies Virgil's ideas of nature, history, sense of nation, and sense of identity. It is exact and patient in its probing for nuance and detail, but also bold, wide, and original in its scope. It combines the study of Virgil with the study of attitudes to nature throughout antiquity. Blending literature with history, and in the case of Lucretius, philosophy, it offers a vision and an interpretation of the culture of the 1st century BC as a whole. It argues that Lucretius and Virgil affected a revolution in Western sensibility; claiming that a book about poetry should be a book about life, it combines scholarship and precision with a sense of the importance of literature and its capacity to enhance our understanding of our past and of ourselves. |
From inside the book
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Page 11
... Odyssey , with Homer's Nausicaa presents her as young and innocent . When she fondles Ascanius , and when her first great denunciation collapses into a ten- der , plaintive domesticity , we see her maternal aspect . We see the great ...
... Odyssey , with Homer's Nausicaa presents her as young and innocent . When she fondles Ascanius , and when her first great denunciation collapses into a ten- der , plaintive domesticity , we see her maternal aspect . We see the great ...
Page 12
... Odyssey and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Georgics ; they are classical literature's three highest tributes to married love . Especially intriguing for our present enquiry are those places where Virgil brings a sexual feeling ...
... Odyssey and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Georgics ; they are classical literature's three highest tributes to married love . Especially intriguing for our present enquiry are those places where Virgil brings a sexual feeling ...
Page 14
... Odyssey never indicate that the poet is a Greek , Virgil begins the second half of his poem by referring to ' our shores ' : we are Italians.20 And later , at the cost of historical anachronism and geographical implausibility , he has ...
... Odyssey never indicate that the poet is a Greek , Virgil begins the second half of his poem by referring to ' our shores ' : we are Italians.20 And later , at the cost of historical anachronism and geographical implausibility , he has ...
Page 16
... Odyssey the Aeneid has no role for a slave . At times the Aeneid briefly but tellingly depicts the miseries of slavery ; most remark- ably , his first Eclogue , standing at the head of his first poetry book , includes an outpouring of ...
... Odyssey the Aeneid has no role for a slave . At times the Aeneid briefly but tellingly depicts the miseries of slavery ; most remark- ably , his first Eclogue , standing at the head of his first poetry book , includes an outpouring of ...
Page 18
... Odyssey , Virgil does not at all exploit the romance of the sea , neither its mys- tery nor its perennity nor even its salt indifference . We might say that the Homeric epics were children of the Aegean , Virgil the child of an inland ...
... Odyssey , Virgil does not at all exploit the romance of the sea , neither its mys- tery nor its perennity nor even its salt indifference . We might say that the Homeric epics were children of the Aegean , Virgil the child of an inland ...
Contents
21 | |
A Transpadanes Experience | 73 |
The Neoteric Experience | 131 |
Energy and Delight | 211 |
The Conquest of Death | 252 |
Earth and Country | 297 |
Land and Nation | 341 |
The Wanderings of Aeneas | 389 |
Latinus Kingdom | 463 |
Evanders Kingdom | 515 |
The Later Aeneid | 564 |
Virgil and the Poets | 593 |
Virgil Augustus and the Future | 631 |
Labor Improbus | 678 |
Index of Passages Cited | 685 |
Index of Greek and Latin Words | 704 |
Other editions - View all
Virgil's Experience: Nature and History, Times, Names, and Places Richard Jenkyns No preview available - 1998 |
Virgil's Experience: Nature and History, Times, Names, and Places Richard Jenkyns No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Achilles adjective Aeneas Aeneid Anchises ancient Arcadia Ascanius atque Augustan Augustus Caesar Callimachus Carm Catullus Cicero colour comes context contrast Creusa death describes Dido distinctive divine earth echoes Eclogues emotional Ennius epic Epicurus Evander experience father Faunus feel force Georgics glory goddess gods golden age Greek hero Homer Horace human idea Iliad imagination Italian Italy Jupiter land landscape later Latin Latium laus Italiae lines literary look Lucr Lucretius meaning metaphor moral nature Nymphs Odyssey once Ovid Pallas paradox passage pastoral pathetic fallacy patriotic perhaps phrase poem poem's poet poet's poetic poetry praise Propertius quae rerum river Roman Rome scene seems seen sense sentence significance simile speech spirit story suggests tells theme Theocritus things Tiber Tiberinus Tibullus tion tone Transpadane Trojans Troy Turnus Venus verse Virgil vision whole woods words