
The Poet's Truth
A Study of the Poet in Virgil's <i>Georgics</i>
Christine Perkell(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 3. November 1989
Book
Hardback
221 pages
978-0-520-06323-5 (ISBN)
Description
The controversy over Virgil's optimism or pessimism, which has long absorbed readers of his poetry, might fruitfully yield to a perspective which allows contradictions to stand unresolved, to constitute, in fact, the essence of his poems' meaning. So interpreted, the pervasive contradictions of the Georgics are not problems to be solved, but expressions of the poet's vision of fundamental tensions in human experience.
Focusing on the figure of the poet in his relationship to the farmer, Professor Perkell studies oppositions between power and beauty, profit and art, matter and spirit, which are critical to the poem's meaning. She points to the poet's privileging of myth over praeceptum, of divine revelation over experiment and practice, and of mystery over solution. The poem's oppositions find ultimate expression in the bougonia, literally false as Georgic precept but metaphorically true as image of Iron Age technology and culture. Through this metaphor, the poet suggests the high value of his own truth and implicitly challenges the values of the agricultural, material poem which the Georgics on its surface professes to be.
Shaped by insights of reader-response and structuralist criticism, this new study of the Georgics should interest Classicists and students of literature.
Focusing on the figure of the poet in his relationship to the farmer, Professor Perkell studies oppositions between power and beauty, profit and art, matter and spirit, which are critical to the poem's meaning. She points to the poet's privileging of myth over praeceptum, of divine revelation over experiment and practice, and of mystery over solution. The poem's oppositions find ultimate expression in the bougonia, literally false as Georgic precept but metaphorically true as image of Iron Age technology and culture. Through this metaphor, the poet suggests the high value of his own truth and implicitly challenges the values of the agricultural, material poem which the Georgics on its surface professes to be.
Shaped by insights of reader-response and structuralist criticism, this new study of the Georgics should interest Classicists and students of literature.
More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-06323-5 (9780520063235)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Christine Perkell is an Associate Professor of Classics at Dartmouth. This is her first book.