At 08:17 PM 4/27/02 +0100, Leofranc Holford-Strevens wrote: > (Suppose for instance that the wink theory could >somehow be made to stand up, why should Vergil wish to play that game?)
This is a fair question. There are, it seems to me, two reasons to argue for the wink theory: 1. You don't like the alternate, empire-as-nightmare theory but "falsa insomnia" sounds sinister so you find a benign way of reading it. 2. You know that Virgil's contemporaries sometimes resorted to allegory in order to rationalize the objectionable bits in Homer: not just the immorality of the gods, but the marvellous in general. You think that Virgil was trying to write a poem in the Homeric mode, and in this period that means allegory. For examples, see the first chapter of Michael Murrin, Allegorical Epic (Chicago, 1980). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
