Preposterous Virgil: Reading through Stoppard, Auden, Wordsworth, Heaney

Description

This study in reception develops close readings of English literature as means of interrogating Virgil’s texts. Through four case studies, bookended by wide-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this book shows how interpreting the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid through modern responses can serve to focus on aspects of Virgil that would otherwise be differently perceived or else escape notice altogether. Juan Christian Pellicer probes our perceptions of the three Virgilian genres (pastoral, georgic, and epic) and analyzes the ways in which modern reconfigurations of these genres can inform our readings of Virgil’s works, as well as help us realize how our own ideas about Virgil reflect the literary receptions through which we approach his texts. This book offers a practical demonstration of classical reception and its value as a critical procedure. By testing the value of modern responses to Virgil as means by which to read his texts, Pellicer critically examines a central tenet of reception studies of classical authors, namely that our understanding of their work can benefit from the receptions through which we perceive them. The reader will find Virgil’s texts reconfigured in challenging new ways and will find new appreciations of the classical traditions that inform key texts in the English canon. Cover Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Reception and the Figure of Allusion 1 Virgil in Stoppard’s Arcadia Mathematics and pastoral Et in Arcadia ego ‘Time conquers All, and we must Time obey’ Loss. And recurrence? Entropy ‘Like seeing a picture’ The kaleidoscope of genre ‘The world’s great age begins anew’ Renewal and return Binaries Fractals in the green cabinet Cleopatra’s nose Eros and elegy Elegy and pastoral What drives Septimus mad? The hermit après la lettre Error and apples, determinism and unpredictability Reception: no way back 2 Virgil’s Shield of Aeneas through Auden’s ‘The Shield of Achilles’ 3 Equivocal Blessings: Georgics 2 through Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ 4 Mantua via Mossbawn: Virgil via Heaney Responses to Virgil Corroborative figures, ghosts and allusion Earthings The Georgics as a model? Georgic diction Archetypes and points of origin: Virgil in Heaney’s early work, 1966–75 Divination and filial piety Virgil through Dante Unfazed by light Auditory imagination ‘Electric Light’ Virgilian music Late Eclogues Baby talk Kites Conclusion: Imagination and the Common Reader – Virgil through V. Sackville-West’s two English Georgics, The Land (1926) and The Garden (1946) Notes Bibliography Index Index Locorum