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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... theme too which permeates the whole of this book , woven across and through it , and this criss - crossing is part of its design . One story that I tell is about Virgil , and here my aim has been to penetrate deep into him ; but another ...
... theme too which permeates the whole of this book , woven across and through it , and this criss - crossing is part of its design . One story that I tell is about Virgil , and here my aim has been to penetrate deep into him ; but another ...
Page 9
... theme in all three of his works ; homosexual love is directly treated in hardly more than two places , the second Eclogue and the story of Nisus and Euryalus in the ninth Aeneid . But perhaps these passages are especially personal ? We ...
... theme in all three of his works ; homosexual love is directly treated in hardly more than two places , the second Eclogue and the story of Nisus and Euryalus in the ninth Aeneid . But perhaps these passages are especially personal ? We ...
Page 14
... theme , describing the city's polity and situation , any reader is likely to wonder why . Of course , most readers will know the answer — while remaining formally impersonal , Virgil is pressing his own sphragis or seal upon his poem ...
... theme , describing the city's polity and situation , any reader is likely to wonder why . Of course , most readers will know the answer — while remaining formally impersonal , Virgil is pressing his own sphragis or seal upon his poem ...
Page 19
... theme returns , louder and more furious , near the end of the book , as Eridanus king of rivers bursts his banks and washes away forests , sweeping cattle and cattle - sheds across the plains . The beau- tiful picture in the second ...
... theme returns , louder and more furious , near the end of the book , as Eridanus king of rivers bursts his banks and washes away forests , sweeping cattle and cattle - sheds across the plains . The beau- tiful picture in the second ...
Page 26
... theme receives its most intense expression in Aeschylus ' Danaids ( fr . 44 ; Aphrodite is speaking ) : " The pure sky lusts to pierce the earth , and lust grips the earth to attain marriage . Rain fallen from her lover the sky makes ...
... theme receives its most intense expression in Aeschylus ' Danaids ( fr . 44 ; Aphrodite is speaking ) : " The pure sky lusts to pierce the earth , and lust grips the earth to attain marriage . Rain fallen from her lover the sky makes ...
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