DIALOGUES ON THE LIBER BVCOLICON

VIRGILIO VATE: Ricupero dell'antico per una nuova poetica del potere Power Point qui
Review Article: Brian Breed Pastoral Inscriptions Vergilius 53 (2007)
Complex simul Querying Feeney about Caesar's Calendar
"Derek Walcott's Metapoetic 'Virgilian Reeds'"
The Design of Virgil's Bucolics Second Edition
Meliboeus [1746 Burman edition]Meliboeus [1746 Burman edition] Meliboeus [1746 Burman edition]Meliboeus [1746 Burman edition]
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 		ROMANVS VATES ATQVE MAGISTER ARCADIVS:
Two Facets of the Reception of the Liber Bucolicon.

[Two papers, April 2003: (1) for Classical Association of Great Britain, Coventry [text here], &
                                        (2) for conference, Arcadia: Uses & Abuses, Oslo April 2003 [photos & texts]

(1) “Theorists Neglect Virgil's First Reception: Theatrical Propaganda & the Bucolics Performed” [Coventry]
Bucolica eo successu edidit ut in scena quoque per cantores crebro pronuntiarentur ([Suet.] Donat. Vita Vergil. § 26: “Virgil issued the Bucolics with such success that also on the stage by performers they were frequently read forth”)
si quando Romae, quo rarissime commeabat, viseretur in publico, sectantis demonstrantisque se subterfugeret in proximum tectum (Idem § 39-40: “if ever he was seen in public at Rome, where he most rarely traveled, he would take refuge from the pursuing & cheering crowds under the nearest roof”)

testis iste populus, qui auditis in teatro Vergili versibus surrexit universus et forte praesentem spectantemque Vergilium veneratus est sic quasi Augustum (Tacitus, Dial. § 13: “witness that public of yours, which in the theater having heard some verses of Virgil's, who happened to be present among the spectators, rose all together & paid him homage almost as if  he were Augustus”). 

GIST of PAPER: avowed receptionists (e.g., Patterson 1987, Martindale 1997, Thomas 2001) score Virgilian tradition for misprision, yet they themselves neglect ancient testimony & modern discussion of the tradition's roots in the Bucolics' successful first reception, which prompted frequent theatrical presentations that made Virgil legendary, a vates identified with the Caesarist regime & thus eventually idolized like Augustus himself (e.g., Dewitt 1923; Van Sickle 1978, 1986, 1992;  Zanker 1988; Beacham 1992 & 1999, Kohn 2000).

(2)"Arcadian Myth of Poetics fashioned  by Virgil building on Theocritus' first Idyll in the Book of Bucolics " [Oslo: see full arguments below at Quali codici & at Staging; see also Oslo workshop photos & texts by clicking here.]
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 “Quali codici d'amore nella decima egloga di Virgilio?
L'eloquio elegiaco contestualizzato nel Bucolicon liber”
( Giornate filologiche Francesco della Corte, Genoa, 2002)
[click here for outline & supporting texts]  {for entire draft of paper, click here}
[PDF files legible by Adobe Acrobat Reader, obtainable gratis by clicking here] [publication forthcoming]
Querying some views of elegy in B.10 (e.g., Conte 1974 & 1986) recounts Virgil’s appropriation from Theocritus  (Id. 1.117-130) of mythemes of bucolic origin in Arcadia, pace Jenkyns (JRS 79, 1989, 26-39) & Citroni (1995).
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 “Virgil vs Cicero, Lucretius, Theocritus, Callimachus, Plato & Homer:
Two Programmatic Plots in the First Bucolic”
Vergilius 46 (2000) 21-58 [outline  here] [part one  here] [part two  here].
Intertextual network of first eclogue synthesized, elucidating  metapoetic import of both speakers, above all Meliboeus -- the opening voice & unsung protagonist of Virgilian poetics -- building on Hunter 1999, Farrell 1991, Wright 1968, Guellius 1575, Ramus 1572, & Ursinus 1567, inter al..
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“Virgil, Bucolics 1.1-2 & Interpretive Tradition:
A Latin (Roman) Program for a Greek Genre”
[Classical Philology 99 (2004) 336-53]

On the meaning & metapoetic import of Tityrus & avena, pace  Cairns [HSCP 1999] 

1990-1999  OLD PARADIGM UNDER DECONSTRUCTION
Dialogue provoked  by the critique of erasure reported below: Aipolic vs Bucolic [click here for texts]
Critique of Scholarly Erasure   with (dis)respect to the poetics of Virgil's book: On erasure as a symptom of a breakdown in scholarly community & detriment to adequate reading of the Bucolics [click for texts].
On Practical Flaws  in So-called 'Reception Theory' as applied to the Liber Bucolicon: Vergilius 44 (1998) 113-15 --"'Eclogues' in Receivership, Bucolics to Re/Read," -- and  Bryn Mawr Classical Review  -- "A poet prey to lovers prone to misprision." [click on underlined titles for respective texts]
“Staging Vergil's Future and Past,” Classical Journal 93 (1997) 211-216, pointing to neglect of two intertwined metapoetic programs: the etiological strain throughout the Liber Bucolicon & its climax in the Arcadian parameters achieved only in B. 10, scilicet the imagined place & time (chronotope) of bucolic origination (Pan primum calamos//O Pan, Pan...).  [click here for text]
A referee report: pointing to confusions & contradictions in a paper on the public presence of the Bucolics. [click here for text],
“The End of the Eclogues,” Vergilius 41 (1995) 114-133: styled by one correspondent a “searching review” of a diffuse commentary still devoted to “eclogues” as opposed to the Book of  Bucolics. [click here for text]
Vates -- Virgil as Poet-Prophet: Reclaiming Epic Tradition from Lucretius & Catullus in the Messianic Eclogue: new title for my 1966 dissertation, which was published as A Reading of Virgil's Messianic Eclogue (Garland 1992), augmented by a critique of scholarship since 1966, e.g. Alpers 1979, Patterson 1987, Clausen 1990, & by suggestions for further strategies in reading. [click here for  PDF files,  legible by Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be obtained gratis by clicking on this link.]
“Response to a Georgics Reader Bemused by the Bucolics,” Vergilius 36 (1990) 56-64. This paper opened the new decade at a Vergilian Society symposium with a challenge to more systematic study of the Bucolics as a poetry book construed as integrated & informed by an ambitious metapoetic program, to be interpreted through a paradigm shift in scholarship away from preoccupation with separate eclogues towards attention to the interwoven design of the book as a whole. [click here for text]. 
Traces of the old paradigm with its focus on separate eclogues still persisted in divers works that I reviewed & criticized as the decade wore on (cf. Virgil's utopian concept of old paradigms undone: sceleris vestigia nostri irrita). [underlining marks clickable links]
At the beginning of the new millennium, encouraged by an incisive editor, I formulated a comprehensive approach to the desired integrative and dialectical reading, aided also by a powerful new interpretation of Theocritus [Hunter 1999]. The resulting study, "Virgil vs..." (cited above) fulfilled the attention to the initial figure of Meliboeus that had been  adumbrated already in “Response” as the decade began. Then “Quali codici...” would prepare for a systematic view of the book's ending; after which it seemed timely to point to still persistent traces of misprision in other readings at another hundred year turn, hence “First Reception…”
At midpoint in the decade, composing "The End of the Eclogues," [q.v. ] it was disappointing to find that a new commentary gave no guidance concerning  the internal structure of each poem. There was no sense how the argument, let alone any drama, might unfold, no hint how any particular nicety of usage or rhetorical point might fit a greater whole. 
Having long since felt the need for such orientation, I returned to the analytical charts composed for the Virgil Encyclopedia & explicated in my Fulbright lectures at Rome University La Sapienza for Virgil's Bimillennium,
Poesia e potere: il mito Virgilio (Roma: Laterza 1986).
These charts as modified begin to provide a framework for building a commentary. [click here].
Each segment can become a link, leading to further information and discussion,
or a container to collect whatever proves material to reading --
 gracili fiscellam texit hibisco.
           

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