In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Simon Cauchi
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>>More humour in Vergil "invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi" (Bk 6)
>>reference to Catullus' Lock of Berenice "invitus, regina, tuo de cervice
>>cessi", a singularly incongruous intertextualism at a singularly inapposite
>>moment.
>
>I have always thought "invitus, regina" to be as bad as W. S. Gilbert's "a
>thing of shreds and patches". But a closer analogy would be if The Yeoman
>of the Guard were an Elizabethan operetta and Hamlet a 19th cent. tragedy,
>so that we would find fault with Shakespeare's line rather than Gilbert's.
>Or rather, as Fletcher puts it better, the sense of incongruity is "much as
>we should feel if we came upon a line from Pope's Rape of the Lock in
>Keats' Hyperion". I don't think Virgil intended the line to be humorous,
>though. Despite the source from which it is taken, the effect is pathetic
>(I mean, pathos is the intended effect). Isn't it?
>
>Aeneas does express a sense of desperation in this speech, and there's
>always something a bit ridiculous about any male -- let alone an epic hero
>-- making excuses and vowing he had no choice in the matter. But I suspect
>there is a bimillennial cultural gulf here (as in so much else to do with
>the Aeneid), and that interpretation is necessarily uncertain.
Indeed; there is a parallel in Horace's _recusatio_ to Augustus at
_Epist._ 2.1/250-7: I would much rather write an epic in your honour
than these earth-bound _sermones_ if I had the talent.
nec sermones ego mallem 250
repentes per humum quam res componere gestas
terrarumque situs et flumina dicere et arces
montibus impositas et barbara regna tuisque
auspiciis totum confecta duella per orbem
claustraque custodem pacis cohibentia Ianum 255
et formidatam Parthis te principe Romam,
si quantum cuperem possem quoque.
Hands up anyone who can say what verse 255 reminds him or her off. Yes,
that's right, Cicero's infamous line
O fortunatam natam me consule Romam.
Subversion? A sly but friendly jest? Inadvertence? Or was _O fortunatam_
not yet the stock example of bad verse it had become by Silver times?
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
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Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone
Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?
OX2 6EJ
tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/267865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
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