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 10
... emotional weight to an episode which is in danger of lacking it . Let us imagine for a moment that 12 Ecl . 10. 46–9 , discussed below . This note of languorous eroticism is heard again in the sensuous verses of Propertius ; see Ch . 14 ...
... emotional weight to an episode which is in danger of lacking it . Let us imagine for a moment that 12 Ecl . 10. 46–9 , discussed below . This note of languorous eroticism is heard again in the sensuous verses of Propertius ; see Ch . 14 ...
Page 17
... emotional force , it can be left simply to be itself , and we shall find that it is recurrently described , not in the language familiar from more recent literature which guides the reader through metaphor and personification , but in ...
... emotional force , it can be left simply to be itself , and we shall find that it is recurrently described , not in the language familiar from more recent literature which guides the reader through metaphor and personification , but in ...
Page 28
... emotional effect upon us . But for Homer neither do the gods represent the force of nature , nor does nature ornament the gods . Both gods and plants are part of the created order , and flowers burgeon as simply and inevitably upon this ...
... emotional effect upon us . But for Homer neither do the gods represent the force of nature , nor does nature ornament the gods . Both gods and plants are part of the created order , and flowers burgeon as simply and inevitably upon this ...
Page 48
... emotion . Apollonius himself , though not capable of Virgil's degree of evoc- ative compression , knew how to link a landscape to the emotions of those beholding it . His description of Syrtis is a remarkable picture of desolation : the ...
... emotion . Apollonius himself , though not capable of Virgil's degree of evoc- ative compression , knew how to link a landscape to the emotions of those beholding it . His description of Syrtis is a remarkable picture of desolation : the ...
Page 49
... emotional effect ; for surely such a spot would be haunted by gulls and waders . ) Yet at the same time this real land- scape , vividly imagined in itself , holds up a mirror to the minds of the Argonauts : it is also a landscape of ...
... emotional effect ; for surely such a spot would be haunted by gulls and waders . ) Yet at the same time this real land- scape , vividly imagined in itself , holds up a mirror to the minds of the Argonauts : it is also a landscape of ...
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