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
Results 1-3 of 25
... means for bringing the future and past together . Aeneas ' visions of both Hector and the Penates , who are intimately asso- ciated with his past , give him a mandate for his future . Creusa has a similar effect , particularly with ...
... means of com- munication and , by the epic's conclusion , has become the vital means of communication . En route to that conclusion , the reader discovers how vision is used to point toward the poem's telos , both in the relationship ...
... means by which to define the human experience : Vision is not a certain mode of thought or presence to self ; it is the means given me for being absent from myself , for being present at the fission of Being from the inside , the ...
Contents
CHAPTER 2 | 22 |
Vision Past and Future | 60 |
Love Vision and Destiny | 97 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown