Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction: the critical landscape
- 1 Virgil and Augustus
- 2 Virgil and the poets: Horace, Ovid and Lucan
- 3 Other voices in Servius: schooldust of the ages
- 4 Dryden's Virgil and the politics of translation
- 5 Dido and her translators
- 6 Philology and textual cleansing
- 7 Virgil in a cold climate: fascist reception
- 8 Beyond the borders of Eboli: anti-fascist reception
- 9 Critical end games
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Critical end games
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- Introduction: the critical landscape
- 1 Virgil and Augustus
- 2 Virgil and the poets: Horace, Ovid and Lucan
- 3 Other voices in Servius: schooldust of the ages
- 4 Dryden's Virgil and the politics of translation
- 5 Dido and her translators
- 6 Philology and textual cleansing
- 7 Virgil in a cold climate: fascist reception
- 8 Beyond the borders of Eboli: anti-fascist reception
- 9 Critical end games
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
“Mr. Prufrock” does not “go off at the end.” It is a portrait of failure, or of a character which fails, and it would be false art to make it end on a note of triumph.
The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941, ed. D. D. PAIGE (New York 1950) pp. 44–5>I am not quite sure, but I seem to remember that E. Lefèvre
>(in Freiburg) tends to believe that the Aeneid is unfinished.
>But as he is a serious scholar he won't publish this. And one
>last thought: Vergil writes in the proem “… dum conderet
>urbem,” but Aeneas doesn't found a city, he finishes his poem
>with the death of Turnus. One could say that the foundation
>of Lavinium is implied by the death of his rival, but to me that
>is not convincing. I keep on having my problems with the
>Aeneid. Ulrich Schmitzer Universität Erlangen-Nuernberg,
“Classics list” @uwashington.edu (1996)
Dr. Schmitzer is not alone in having his problems with this poem, particularly its ending. On May 28, 1996 I was one of three examiners for a “Vergil Academy” at a school in New York City. Each of us conducted four fifteen-minute public examinations of four students, each of them being responsible for one book. I happened to be assigned Aeneid 12, and I concluded my examination by holding up the brochure for the event, on which was depicted the body of a fallen warrior, with another warrior standing alongside, his sword-point resting on the ground. When I asked “What is wrong with this picture?” my student quickly responded: “Well, we don't actually see that moment in the poem.”
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- Virgil and the Augustan Reception , pp. 278 - 296Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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