Poetic Figurations of Rural Life in the Georgics
Keywords:
didactic poetry, agriculture, fiction, poetry, VirgilAbstract
In this article we intend to show that Virgil’s Georgics, despite presenting obvious points of contact with some rural practices existing in ancient Rome, should not be taken as a strict document on Roman rurality. Some elements allow us to consider it mainly as a product of poetic creation more than as a pure expression of reality, such as the lack of details and the “selectivity” found in some of the topics incorporated to the teacher’s technical approach. In addition to this, some reviews conducted by Philip Thibodeau (2011) show that even though the slaves were not completely overlooked under Virgil’s precepts, the elimination of the uilicus – rural administrator – allowed the public to interact with the text in a more decent way, making each one of them to become a sort of discipulus in the position of an agricola (“free cultivator”) instead of some kind of slave.
Downloads
References
ANDREAU, J. L’économie du monde romain. Paris: Ellipses, 2010.
BORNECQUE, H.; MORNET, D. Roma e os romanos. Tradução de A. D. Lima. São Paulo: EPU, 2002.
CATÃO. Da agricultura. Tradução, introdução e notas por M. Trevizam. Campinas: Unicamp, 2016.
DALZELL, A. The Criticism of Didactic Poetry: Essays on Lucretius, Virgil and Ovid. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Gale, M. Virgil on the Nature of Things: The Georgics, Lucretius and the Didactic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
GRIMAL, P. Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
Grimal, P. Virgílio, ou o segundo nascimento de Roma. Tradução de I. C. Benedetti. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1992.
HESÍODO. Os trabalhos e os dias. Tradução de M. C. N. Lafer. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2008.
MORGAN, L. Patterns of redemption in Virgil’s Georgics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
NELSON, S. God and the Land: The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
OTIS, B. Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1995.
ROBERT, J.-N. La vie à la campagne dans l’Antiquité romaine. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985.
SENECA. Ad Lucilium epistulae morales. With an English translation by R. Gummere. Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press/Heinemann, 1917-1925. v. I-III.
THIBODEAU, P. Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil’s Georgics. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2011.
TREVIZAM, M. Mal e violência nas Geórgicas de Virgílio. In: OLIVEIRA, F.; SILVA, M. F.; BARBOSA, T. V. R. (Org.). Violência e transgressão: uma trajetória da humanidade. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra; São Paulo: Annablume, 2014. p. 189-230.
UREÑA PRIETO, M. H. T. Dicionário de literatura grega. Lisboa: Verbo, 2001.
VARRÃO. Das coisas do campo. Tradução de M. Trevizam. Campinas: Unicamp, 2012.
VASCONCELLOS, P. S. Épica I. Campinas: Unicamp, 2014.
VIRGIL. Georgics: volume 1 – books I-II. Edited by R. F. Thomas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
VIRGILE. Géorgiques. Traduit par E. de Saint-Denis. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998.
VIRGÍLIO. Eneida. Tradução de C. A. Nunes, organização de J. A. Oliva Neto. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2014.
VIRGÍLIO. Geórgicas I. Tradução de M. Trevizam e A. F. de Castilho. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2013.
Volk, K. The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
WEEDA, L. Vergil’s Political Commentary in the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2015.
Wilkinson, L. P. The Georgics of Virgil: a Critical Survey. Norman:
Oklahoma University Press, 1997.
