Idyllic Visions

Idyllic Visions addresses the surprising density of references to vision within the compact corpus of the poet Theocritus. Vision appears as both a formal literary element in the texts and a social force that drives the negotiation of roles between characters and resonates with the lived experience of the poet and his audience. This association between sight and social power is expressed by means of ecphrastic descriptions of people, gendered gazes, and glances that enchant through their magical properties. Blindness and the unseen play a programmatic role in several poems and highlight the poet's ability to reveal and conceal within his fictional world. The final chapter explores the role of vision in Theocritus' depictions of Hellenistic monarchs and the reception of this motif in the Roman poets Vergil and Calpurnius Siculus. This study offers important new readings of Theocritus and the successors of the new genre that he founded.