Virgil's Cinematic Art: Vision as Narrative in the Aeneid

201 Pages·2022·14.074 MB·English

by  Kirk Freudenburg

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Virgil’s Cinematic Art
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Virgil’s
Cinematic Art
Vision as Narrative in the Aeneid
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KIRK FREUDENBURG
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freudenburg, Kirk, 1961– author.
Title: Virgil’s cinematic art : vision as narrative in the Aeneid / Kirk Freudenburg.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029506 (print) | LCCN 2022029507 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197643242 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197643266 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Virgil. Aeneis.
Classification: LCC PA6825 .F779 2023 (print) | LCC PA6825 (ebook) |
DDC 873/.01—dc23/eng/20220922
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029506
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029507
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780197643242.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
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For Judi—
First, Last, Best
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Contents
Preface ix
List of Illustrations xiii
Introduction: The “Seeming” of the “Seen”— Narrative as Vision in
Ancient Epic 1
I.1. S eeing with Eyes Tightly Shut 1
I.2. T wo Worlds in Dialogue: Film Analysis and Classic Narratology 5
1. Introducing Suture 15
1.1. T racking Turnus: Visual Pursuit 15
1.2. W atching Paris: Hatred at First Sight 21
1.3. S ightings, First and Last: the Insect Similes of the Aeneid 29
2. P recedents in Earlier Roman Poetry 39
2.1. G etting High with Lucretius 39
2.2. Vertical Relations 48
2.3. Th e Grammar of Angles Taken 60
2.4. Th e Other Side of High: Positioning Pathos 64
3. S eeing as Telling 80
3.1. Th e Temple Ecphrasis of Aeneid 1 80
3.2. A eneas the Neoteric 86
3.3. Duces Feminae: Fade to Dido 93
3.4. I mage Pairs: The Catullan Background 101
3.5. C aving In to Desire: Dido’s Wedding Parade 103
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viii Contents
4. I magery as Understory 111
4.1. D ido’s Visual Feast 111
4.2. Picturing Virgil’s Words: Dido in the Middle 114
4.3. G olden Dido 120
4.4. O n Keeping Dido Unfathomable 127
4.5. G irl on Fire 131
5. I magery as Counternarrative in the Death of Camilla 143
5.1. Imagining Camilla 143
5.2. T racking Prey with Camilla 144
5.3. D ressed to Kill: Clothing as Fire- starter, Again 148
5.4. The Death of Camilla as a Life Fully Lived 152
5.5. O ne Last Look: Visual Counternarrative, and the Humanness of
Virgil’s “Heroes” 153
Appendix 159
Works Cited 167
Index 177
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Preface
Like packages arriving in the mail, sabbaticals get snatched when
they arrive, and my most recent sabbatical showed up when Yale’s libraries were
closed, books were hard to come by, and interlocutors were nowhere in sight. The
American politics of that dark moment were so unholy and distressing (still are)
that I needed “somewhere else” to go with my thoughts; somewhere far away, in
antiquity, in stories, in film. During my cloistered leave, much of which was spent
in a spare bedroom repurposed as a makeshift office, I made myself finish editing
a commentary that had taken me more than twenty- five years to complete, and
I drafted this book from start to finish. I could do that, pursuing a new proj-
ect with uncharacteristic haste, not only because circumstances dictated that the
book had to be idea- driven, since it was just me, alone with my thoughts, rather
than in conversation with people and books, but also because for the better part
of ten years I had been floating the basic ideas of the book in lecture form. The
essence of what I wanted to say was mostly worked out and ready to go. I just
needed a snatch of time to get my ideas down in readable book form.
The style of the book may seem “off” to some: too colloquial, irregular, imper-
tinent. But the choice was deliberate. I wrote it this way because I want the book
to be accessible to non- specialists, even as I harbor high hopes of its saying things
necessary and new to scholars of Virgil’s Aeneid (and of ancient epic more gener-
ally); things that they might actually choose to take seriously. Whether I have
managed to pull off this “double act” is not for me to say.
I first lectured on the basic substance of this book at a meeting of the Classical
Association of the Northwest at the University of Washington in March 2010.
There, thanks to the kind invitation of Cathy Connors, I gave the conference’s
keynote address under the title “The Cinematography of Virgil’s Aeneid,” choos-
ing to make that my theme (rather than something, yet again, on Roman satire)
because I thought the basic ideas I was toying with might grab audiences, espe-
cially since (as in this book) the argument lends itself so well to being packaged
with ample, color- rich visual illustrations. At first, the illustrations were eye candy;