Virgil's Eclogues and the Art of Fiction: A Study of the Poetic Imagination

by Raymond Kania

Overview

Many scholars have seen ancient bucolic poetry as a venue for thinking about texts and textuality. This book reassesses Virgil's Eclogues and their genre, arguing that they are better read as fiction - that is, as a work that refers not merely to itself or to other texts but to a world of its own making. This makes for a rich work of art and an object of legitimate aesthetic and imaginative engagement. Increased attention to the fictionality of Virgilian poetry also complicates and enriches the Eclogues' social and political dimensions. The book offers new interpretations of poems like Eclogues 5 and 9, which, according to traditional allegorical readings, concern Julius Caesar and the confiscation of lands under Octavian, respectively. It shows how the Eclogue world stands in a less stable relation to reality; these poems challenge readers at every turn to reimagine the relationship between fiction and the real.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316537664
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Raymond Kania studied Classics at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. He has taught a wide variety of courses on classical thought and literature at institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, California, where he currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship and pursues research on Greek and Roman poetry.

Table of Contents

1. The 'world of the work of art': reading the Eclogue book; 2. Worlds apart: dialogue in and on the Eclogues; 3. The authors of the Eclogues; 4. Love and other problems: the limits of pastoral representation.