Playing the Farmer: Representations of Rural Life in Vergil's Georgics
Philip Thibodeau
Abstract
This book reinvigorates our understanding of Vergil's Georgics, a vibrant work written by Rome's premier epic poet shortly before he began the Aeneid. Setting the Georgics in the social context of its day, the book connects the poem's idyllic, and idealized, portrait of rustic life and agriculture with changing attitudes toward the countryside in late Republican and early Imperial Rome. It argues that what has been seen as a straightforward poem about agriculture is in fact an enchanting work of fantasy that elevated, and sometimes whitewashed, the realities of country life. Drawing from a wid ... More
Keywords: Vergil, Georgics, Rome, epic poet, Aeneid, rustic life, agriculture, countryside, country life, agrarian ideals
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 | Print ISBN-13: 9780520268326 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 | DOI:10.1525/california/9780520268326.001.0001 |
