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
... version of the appendix was published in Classical Quarterly in 1993 ; one or two sentences have found their way into my little book Classical Epic : Homer and Virgil ( 1992 ) . This book has been written , suitably perhaps , in PREFACE ix.
... version of the appendix was published in Classical Quarterly in 1993 ; one or two sentences have found their way into my little book Classical Epic : Homer and Virgil ( 1992 ) . This book has been written , suitably perhaps , in PREFACE ix.
Page 18
... epics were children of the Aegean , Virgil the child of an inland plain , but the matter seems to be more one of indi- vidual temper : immense and undifferentiated , the sea was not readily suggestive to a sensibility that cherished ...
... epics were children of the Aegean , Virgil the child of an inland plain , but the matter seems to be more one of indi- vidual temper : immense and undifferentiated , the sea was not readily suggestive to a sensibility that cherished ...
Page 20
... epic ; yet Virgil can make it the culmination of his keenly personal vision of the Italian experience . The Georgics was written partly when civil conflict seemed endless , partly after peace was secure , and both times are reflected in ...
... epic ; yet Virgil can make it the culmination of his keenly personal vision of the Italian experience . The Georgics was written partly when civil conflict seemed endless , partly after peace was secure , and both times are reflected in ...
Page 27
... epics ; Demeter , the earth mother , never appears in them , though she is occasionally mentioned . But there are many things in Homer which are either kept in the background , to be felt occa- sionally as a dim presence , or else ...
... epics ; Demeter , the earth mother , never appears in them , though she is occasionally mentioned . But there are many things in Homer which are either kept in the background , to be felt occa- sionally as a dim presence , or else ...
Page 43
... epic , but one which seeks to adapt a traditional form to a modern sensibility . Its central theme is not war but love — the story of Jason and Medea — and within the love narrative , the woman is the more closely studied than the man ...
... epic , but one which seeks to adapt a traditional form to a modern sensibility . Its central theme is not war but love — the story of Jason and Medea — and within the love narrative , the woman is the more closely studied than the man ...
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