The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's AeneidOne 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. |
From inside the book
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... ' Katabasis 82 Site/Sight of Rome 90 Conclusion 95 chapter 4 Hic amor: Love, Vision, and Destiny 97 Aliud genus officii: Vision and the Second Favor 98 Viewpoints of Departure: Deception, Vision, and the Separation of Dido vii Contents.
... Sight Makes Right and the Aeneid's Finale 159 chapter 6 Conclusion: Ante ora parentum 176 notes 183 bibliography 223 subject index 237 index locorum 247 Preface and Acknowledgments n My desire to consider vision in viii the primacy of ...
... sight before them. These different perspectives converge to create for the reader a rich literary vista. Keats' use of vision, therefore, is not a mere matter of perspective but a subjective experience informed by the intertextual ...
... sight and speech reflects the time when Virgil composed the Aeneid, a period situated between the waning influence of the art of rhetoric in the Roman Republic and the waxing influence of images in the new empire.15 Paul Zanker and Karl ...
... sight.36 The Merleau- Pontian concept of vision begins with physical sight but extends to the notion of metaphysical gaze. Despite the limitations of empiricism in the context of a philosophical study of nature,37 Merleau-Ponty believed ...
Contents
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 |