Virgil's Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid

Description

Virgil's Aeneid invites its reader to identify with the Roman nation whose origins and destiny it celebrates. But, as J. D. Reed argues in Virgil's Gaze, the great Roman epic satisfies this identification only indirectly--if at all. In retelling the story of Aeneas' foundational journey from Troy to Italy, Virgil defines Roman national identity onl

J. D. Reed is Assistant Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan, and the editor of Bion of Smyrna: The Fragments and the Adonis.

"Point of view or perspective, in all its forms, has been a chief concern of Virgilian criticism for decades now, and Reed's book shows that there is yet much to be discovered in these well-traveled areas of investigation, especially where narratology meets intertextuality... [T]he book both informs and provides much to contemplate."--Brian W. Breed, New England Classical Journal "Reed is an excellent interweaver of citations. He seems to have photographic recall of every metaphor ever penned in Hellenistic literature. His elucidation of the tangled ethnographies of peoples and cities of the ancient world is admirably precise. And he is correct to note the ironies that Virgil has built into his foundational epic."--Anthony Esolen, Claremont Review of Books "This book has many strengths. The close readings it extracts from the Aeneid's intertextuality with early Roman poetry, especially Naevius and tragedy, are often exciting."--Brian W. Breed, New England Classical Journal