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. |
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... begin to cease viewing each other sympathetically , however , their relationship begins to deteriorate , and the hero's vision of his future city replaces his view of her as the object of his love . Vision in the Dido and Aeneas tale ...
... begins to shift toward the future , for much of what Aeneas and his father behold is yet to come . Aeneas ' dialogue with his past encom- passes a series of explicated visions of the future . These future visions consist of persons and ...
... begins to take hold , and Aeneas , as once the Homeric Menelaus did for Adrestos ( II . 6.45-50 ) , considers sparing Turnus.153 Putnam observes , " For a moment at least , words appear to triumph over deeds . " 154 It is not , however ...
Contents
CHAPTER 2 | 22 |
Vision Past and Future | 60 |
Love Vision and Destiny | 97 |
Copyright | |
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