Pastoral Inscriptions: Reading and Writing Virgil's Eclogues (Classical Literature and Society)

Breed, Brian W

ISBN 10: 0715634496 / ISBN 13: 9780715634493

Published by Bristol Classical Press, 2006

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Pastoral Inscriptions: Reading and Writing Virgil's Eclogues (Classical Literature and Society)
• Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0715634496
• ISBN 13: 9780715634493
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

Virgil's "Eclogues" represent the introduction of a new genre, pastoral, to Latin literature. Generic markers of pastoral in the "Eclogues" include not only the representation of the singing and speaking of shepherd characters, but also the learned density of the text itself. Here, Brian W. Breed examines the tension between representations of orality in Virgil's pastoral world and the intense textuality of his pastoral poetry. The book argues that separation between speakers and their language in the "Eclogues" is not merely pastoral preciosity. Rather, it shows how Virgil uses representations of orality as the point of comparison for measuring both the capacity and the limitations of the "Eclogues" as a written text that will be encountered by reading audiences. The importance of genre is considered both in terms of how pastoral might be defined for the particular literary-historical moment in which Virgil was writing and in light of the subsequent European pastoral tradition.

About the Author

Brian W. Breed is Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Massachusetts Amherst.