Narrative And Simile From The Georgics In The Aeneid

Preliminary Material /Ward W. Briggs -- Introduction /Ward W. Briggs -- Similes in the Georgics Used for Similes in the Aeneid /Ward W. Briggs -- Narrative in the Georgics Used for Similes in the Aeneid /Ward W. Briggs -- Conclusions /Ward W. Briggs -- Bibliography /Ward W. Briggs -- Index Locorum /Ward W. Briggs.

Just as the story of an epic poem is woven from characters and plot, so too the individual similes within an epic create a unique simile world. Like any other story, it is peopled by individual characters, happenings, and experiences, such as the shepherd and his flocks, a storm at sea, or predators hunting prey. The simile world that complements the epic mythological story is re-imagined afresh in relation to the themes of each epic poem. As Deborah Beck argues in this stimulating book, over time a simile world takes shape across many poems composed over many centuries. This evolving landscape resembles the epic story world of battles, voyages, and heroes that comes into being through relationships among different epic poems. Epic narrative is woven from a warp of the mythological story world and a weft of the simile world. They are partners in creating the fabric of epic poetry.

Madness Unchained is a comprehensive introduction to and study of Virgil's Aeneid. The book moves through Virgil's epic scene by scene and offers a detailed explication of not only all the major (and many minor) difficulties of interpretation, but also provides a cohesive argument that explores Virgil's point in writing this epic of Roman mythology and Augustan propaganda: the role of fury or madness in Rome's national identity. There have been other books that have attempted to present a complete guide to the Aeneid, but this is the first to address every episode in the poem, omitting nothing, and aiming itself at an audience that ranges from the Advanced Placement Virgil student in secondary school to the professional Virgilian and everyone in-between, both Latinists and the Latin-less. Individual chapters correspond to the books of the poem; unlike some volumes that prejudice the reader's interpretation of the work by rearranging the order of episodes in order to influence their impact on the audience, this book moves in the order Virgil intended, and also gives rather fuller exposition to the second half of the poem, Virgil's self-proclaimed 'greater work' (maius opus).

This book, consisting of three self-contained studies, deals with the Euripidean messenger-speech. The first study concerns the form of the messenger-speech, which is that of a first-person narrative, and the consequences of this form. The second study analyses the messenger's style of presentation. In the third study the place and function of the messenger-speech within the play is discussed. Although scholars have dealt with the messenger-speech before, there is no single, up-to-date work of reference available. The present study aims at filling this void, while making use of analytical tools deriving from narratology and drama-theory. Eight appendices are added, which provide the reader with complete lists of phenomena discussed in the main text. Often considered transparent and self-explanatory, the messenger-speeches are now shown to be both complex and subtle texts.

Calling into question the common assumption that the Middle Ages produced no secondary epics, Ann W. Astell here revises a key chapter in literary history. She examines the connections between the Book of Job and Boethius' s Consolation of Philosophy—texts closely associated with each other in the minds of medieval readers and writers—and demonstrates that these two works served as a conduit for the tradition of heroic poetry from antiquity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. As she traces the complex influences of classical and biblical texts on vernacular literature, Astell offers provocative readings of works by Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Malory, Milton, and many others. Astell looks at the relationship between the historical reception of the epic and successive imitative forms, showing how Boethius's Consolation and Johan biblical commentaries echo the allegorical treatment of" epic truth" in the poems of Homer and Virgil, and how in turn many works classified as "romance" take Job and Boethius as their models. She considers the influences of Job and Boethius on hagiographic romance, as exemplified by the stories of Eustace, Custance, and Griselda; on the amatory romances of Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice, and Troilus and Criseyde; and on the chivalric romances of Martin of Tours, Galahad, Lancelot, and Redcrosse. Finally, she explores an encyclopedic array of interpretations of Job and Boethius in Milton's Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

A collection of ten classic essays on Vergil's Georgics, written between 1970 and 1999. The contributions represent recent developments in Vergilian scholarship, and are placed in context in a specially written Introduction.

A consideration of the allusive poetry of Ovid based on the philosophy of Martin Buber

In Textual Strategies in Ancient War Narrative fourteen specialists study, from literary, linguistic and historical angles the textual strategies that the Greek historian Herodotus and the Roman historian Livy employ in their accounts of two famous battles in ancient history