>Subject: Re: VIRGIL: RE: Panegyric, was: a question on book iv >Sent: 7/15/98 4:07 PM >Received: 7/15/98 5:31 PM >From: David Wilson-Okamura, [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 15:31:24 +0200 >From: "Jorge Fernandez Lopez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>At 10:39 PM 7/14/98 +0000, Yvan Nadeau wrote: >>>The problem about email is that it induces action rather than >>>reflection. I think I shall give it up. >> >>I'm not sure it's any worse than conversation in that regard, but I think >>Yvan's right about the epic/panegyric distinction: it probably didn't >>exist. T. C. Donatus thinks the best way to explain the Aeneid is as >>sustained piece of epideictic rhetoric. Servius thinks that Virgil's >>intention was to imitate Homer and praise Augustus through his ancestors. >>Both commentators postdate Virgil by a few centuries, but they were closer >>to the world of ancient literary criticism than we are. > >Just a comment: >Though Donatus and Servius were temporally closer to Virgil, maybe such >closeness prevented them from examinating Virgil with a certain >perspective; and they were no doubt biased by the identification >literature=rhetoric that made them conceive any written work as something >classified within the frame of rhetorical categories.
Don't forget that Ovid said Book 4 was the most read book of the poem. And Augustine spent his youth weeping over Dido. So perhaps you need to posit a disconnect between commentators, on the one hand, and readers on the other, who seem to have differed on the effects (if not also the purposes) of the poem. c. perkell > Christine Perkell/ Zarbin Department of Classics Associate Professor Callaway Center N404 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Emory University 404 727 7592; fax 404 727 0223 Atlanta, GA 30322 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
