Virgil and Arcadia
Richard Jenkyns
There is an obstacle to our natural appreciation of Virgil's Eclogues which looms as large in their case that any poetry whatever. The form probably the most influential group short poems ever written: though they themselves take Theocritus a model, were become fountainhead from vast and diverse tradition pastoral many European literatures was spring. To use them model itself distort character: it one greatest ironies literary history these elusive, various, eccentric should have pattern for hundreds later writers. Moreover, growth meant things attributed Virgil are not Virgil. Sometimes derived interpretations put upon late antiquity but we now believe be mistaken; sometimes misinterpretations much date; originated new developments literature inventors had seem Virgilian, course time got foisted back on nevertheless. It hard, therefore, approach openly without preconceptions about what contain, even scholars who devoted learning continued hold views there dispassionate observation no good grounds at all. No perhaps so encrusted by barnacles interpretation these, need scrape away if see true shape. My aim here do some this scraping examining Arcadians name Arcadia work.
Journal of Roman Studies