Virgil's Georgics, the most neglected of the poet's three major works, is brought to life and infused with fresh meanings in this dynamic collection of new readings. The Georgics is shown to be a rich field of inherited and varied literary forms, actively inviting a wide range of interpretations as well as deep reflection on its place within the tradition of didactic poetry.
The essays contained in this volume – contributed by scholars from Australia, Europe and North America – offer new approaches and interpretive methods that greatly enhance our understanding of Virgil's poem. In the process, they unearth an array of literary and philosophical sources which exerted a rich influence on the Georgics but whose impact has hitherto been underestimated in scholarship. A second goal of the volume is to examine how the Georgics – with its profound meditations on humankind, nature, and the socio-political world of its creation – has been (re)interpreted and appropriated by readers and critics from antiquity to the modern era. The volume opens up a number of exciting new research avenues for the study of the reception of the Georgics by highlighting the myriad ways in which the poem has been understood by ancient readers, early modern poets, explorers of the 'New World', and female translators of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Author(s): Nicholas Freer, Bobby Xinyue
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 304
City: London
Cover page
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
PREFACE
NOTES ON THE TEXT
INTRODUCTION
PART I READING THE GEORGICS
CHAPTER 1 THE STORY OF YOU: SECOND-PERSON NARRATIVE AND THE NARRATOLOGY OF THE GEORGICS
The way I tell ’em: narratology, classical literature and didactic poetry
Stories of you: second- person narration, didactic poetry and their scholarship
Naming of parts: standard, autotelic and hypothetical narratives
Hypothetical second-person narrative and the determinism of the third-person
Epilogue
CHAPTER 2 CLEARING THE GROUND IN GEORGICS 1
New beginnings
Georgics 1.104–10
Georgics 1.43–83
CHAPTER 3 AESTHETICS, FORM AND MEANING IN THE GEORGICS
Empathy and melancholy
Stylized archaizing
Form made visible: patterning in the Georgics
PART II RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER 4 GEORGICA AND ORPHICA : THE GEORGICS IN THE CONTEXT OF ORPHIC POETRY AND RELIGION
The Orphica
Orphica in the Eclogues
Orphic religion and Orphica in the Georgics
Orphica and expiation
Implications
CHAPTER 5 VIRGIL’S GEORGICS AND THE EPICUREAN SIRENS OF POETRY
The sphragis
Georgics 2 and 3
Conclusions
PART III POLITICS AND SOCIETY
CHAPTER 6 DIVINIZATION AND DIDACTIC EFFICACY IN VIRGIL’S GEORGICS*
Divinization and cura terrarum
Divinization and cura triumphorum
The triumph of Caesar
Divinization and didactic efficacy
Conclusions
CHAPTER 7 BUNTE BARBAREN SETTING UP THE STAGE: RE-INVENTING THE BARBARIAN ON THE GEORGICS’ THEATRE-TEMPL (G . 3.1-48)
Staging the barbarian5
Bunte Barbaren setting up the stage
Conclusion
CHAPTER 8 FROM MUNERA UESTRA CANO TO IPSE DONA FERAM : LANGUAGE OF SOCIAL RECIPROCITY IN THE GEORGICS
Absences: the Georgics and explicit (socio-)economics
Metaphors: man and nature
Poisoned gifts: man and Jupiter
Approaching the future: the narrator and his patrons
Acquiring symbolic capital: Virgil and his audience
Conclusion: reciprocity at the time of Actium
PART IV ROMAN RESPONSES
CHAPTER 9 ‘PULPY FICTION’: VIRGILIAN RECEPTION AND GENRE IN COLUMELLA DE RE RUSTICA10
CHAPTER 10 SERVIAN READINGS OF RELIGION IN THE GEORGICS
PART V MODERN RESPONSES
CHAPTER 11 THE GEORGICS OFF THE CANADIAN COAST: MARC LESCARBOT’S A-DIEU À LA NOUVELLE-FRANCE (1609) AND THE VIRGILIAN TRADITION
Introduction
Renaissance and early modern reading and reception of the Georgics
Lescarbot’s A-dieu à la Nouvelle-France and the Georgics
Conclusions
Appendix: primary texts from the early modern period cited in this chapter
CHAPTER 12 SHELLEY’S GEORGIC LANDSCAPE
CHAPTER 13 WOMEN AND EARTH: FEMALE RESPONSES TO THE GEORGICS IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
Janet Lembke: ‘a classical naturalist’
Vita Sackville-West: a gardener poet
Sackville-West and Lembke: a common worldview and a common style
Ways ahead: how ecofeminism could illuminate The Land87
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF PASSAGES
INDEX
