<< forwarded by list owner >> Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 18:45:56 -0700 From: Gregory Hays <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Vergilian seances
>Jackson Knight >supposedly contacted the spirit of Virgil through a medium. A question >for the list: Does anyone know more about Knight's seance? It is a >trivial question but, hey, even Virgil students need some good gossip >from time to time. See the biography by his brother, the Shakespearian scholar G. Wilson Knight, _Jackson Knight: A Biography_ (Oxford, Alden Press 1975). There may also be information in T.P. Wiseman's _Talking to Virgil_ (Exeter, 1992), though I have not seen this in the flesh. Jackson Knight is by no means the first person to have achieved post-mortem contact with the poet. Fulgentius in his _Expositio Virgilianae Continentiae_ evokes the shade of Vergil in order to extract from him an allegorical account of his epic. St. Augustine evidently felt the same hankering (serm. 105, 7, quoting the famous 'imperium sine fine' passage): Forte si vellemus hinc agitare Vergilium et insultare quare hoc dixerit, in parte tolleret nos et diceret nobis (etc.). And then of course there is Dante ... ++++++++++++++++++++++ Gregory Hays Dept. of Classics, 401 Cabell Hall University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22903 http://members.aol.com/greghays ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
