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  1. Home
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  3. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's Georgics
  • Cited by 49
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2015
Print publication year:
1999
Online ISBN:
9780511549410
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511549410
Subjects:
Classical Studies, Classical Studies (General), Classical Literature
Series:
Cambridge Classical Studies
Information

Book description

At the time of this book's first publication in 1999, orthodoxy interpreted the Georgics as a statement of profound ambivalence towards Octavian and his claim to be Rome's saviour after the catastrophe of the civil wars. This book takes issue with the model of the subtly subversive poet. It argues that in the turbulent political circumstances which obtained at the time of the poem's composition, Virgil's preoccupation with violent conflict has a highly optimistic import. Octavian's brutal conduct in the civil wars is subjected to a searching analysis, but is ultimately vindicated, refigured as a paradoxically constructive violence analogous to blood sacrifice or Romulus' fratricide of Remus. The vindication of Octavian also has strictly literary implications for Virgil. The close of the poem sees Virgil asserting his mastery of the Homeric mode of poetry and the providential world-view it was thought to embody.

Reviews

"This is clearly a learned book and I have learned a lot from reading it..." Robert Cramer, Universitaet Bonn, email

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