Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 11:45:02 +0000 From: natasha golding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I agree up to a point but I disagree that Aeneas was is shown to be emotionally detached from Dido and Creusa. He was not a "complete failure with women" Although you mention he did not look at Dido and tried to get away without telling her. This is only half the story. You will notice that Virgil states "his heart was shaken with his great love" when he speaks to Dido for the last time. Its not that he didnt care about her but again it comes down to free will. If his will were entirely free he may well have stayed with her. It is the intervention of the gods that reminds him of his responsibility (pietas) not any lack of feeling on his part. It is simply that he displays a little more self control than Dido at this point. At 02:48 06/11/98 PST, you wrote: >> Also >>Aeneas trys to put it gently to Dido why he is leaving , Odysseus does >the >>same as well to Kalyso and Kalypso pleads for him to stay just as Dido >does >>to Aneas. > >Ahem, um, no. Aeneas tries to leave without telling Dido! And when she >forces him into confrontation, he can hardly bear to look at her. He is >completely tactless; he tells her that even if he had free will he would >not stay with her but would have prefered to have stayed in Troy and >rebuilt the city. > >All in all, Aeneas is presented as a complete failure with women. He >loses his first wife Creusa through sheer carelessness and lack of >thought, and he doesn't even consider the potential consequences of his >actions for Dido and is a direct cause of her death. We never see him as >being close or intimate with a woman; through the whole of book 4 we see >events from Dido's perspective, indicating that Aeneas is not anywhere >near as emotionally involved as she is. The distance between Aeneas and >Creusa emotionally is reflected in the distance that Aeneas physically >enforces between them in their journey out of Troy. And as for Lavinia, >we never even see her physically close to Aeneas, yet alone emotionally >- in the poem they never even meet!!! >Just my thoughts. >Caro ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
