The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's Aeneid

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University of Texas Press, Sep 13, 2013 - Literary Criticism - 271 pages

One of the masterpieces of Latin and, indeed, world literature, Virgil's Aeneid was written during the Augustan "renaissance" of architecture, art, and literature that redefined the Roman world in the early years of the empire. This period was marked by a transition from the use of rhetoric as a means of public persuasion to the use of images to display imperial power. Taking a fresh approach to Virgil's epic poem, Riggs Alden Smith argues that the Aeneid fundamentally participates in the Augustan shift from rhetoric to imagery because it gives primacy to vision over speech as the principal means of gathering and conveying information as it recounts the heroic adventures of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome.

Working from the theories of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Smith characterizes Aeneas as a voyant-visible, a person who both sees and is seen and who approaches the world through the faculty of vision. Engaging in close readings of key episodes throughout the poem, Smith shows how Aeneas repeatedly acts on what he sees rather than what he hears. Smith views Aeneas' final act of slaying Turnus, a character associated with the power of oratory, as the victory of vision over rhetoric, a triumph that reflects the ascendancy of visual symbols within Augustan society. Smith's new interpretation of the predominance of vision in the Aeneid makes it plain that Virgil's epic contributes to a new visual culture and a new mythology of Imperial Rome.

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Contents

Prophaenomena ad Vergilium
1
Ruse and Revelation Visions of the Divine and the Telos of Narrative
24
Vision Past and Future
60
Hic amor Love Vision and Destiny
97
Vidi Vici Visions Victory and the Telos of Narrative
128
Conclusion Ante ora parentum
176
Notes
183
Bibliography
223
Subject Index
237
Index Locorum
247
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About the author (2013)

Riggs Alden Smith is Associate Professor of Classics and Associate Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University.

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