CORE-UA 400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Virgil, Pax Romana, Aeneid
27 Oct 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Virgil seated between the muse of tragedy and the muse of history. "the rugged pyrrhus, like the hyrcanian beast,"-- it is not so:--it begins with pyrrhus:-- Dante and virgil botticelli"s illustration for the divine comedy. A 12th century theologian explains (allegorically) that virgil describes human life under the guise of the history of aeneas, who is the symbol of the soul. An image of inheritance ~ an image of translation . The past: aeneas carries the burden of the past. The future: aeneas carries the burden of the future. Imitatio ( imitation ): an author"s conscious use of features and characteristics of earlier works to acknowledge indebtedness to past writers, though usually by simply copying: aemulatio ( emulation ): considered a higher form of imitation. Ancient theoretical discussions of imitation agree that good imitation required more than simple copying.
