View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository Writing Poems on Trees: Genre and Metapoetics in Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics by John H. Henkel A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: James O’Hara, Advisor Sharon James, Reader Stephen Harrison, Reader James Rives, Reader William Race, Reader Oc 2009 John H. Henkel ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract JOHN H. HENKEL: Writing Poems on Trees: Genre and Metapoetics in Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics. (Under the direction of James O’Hara.) This dissertation seeks to provide firmer grounding for the study of metapoetics in Roman poetry by investigating Vergil’s use of metapoetic narrative, symbolism, and metaphor in the Eclogues and Georgics. I argue that Vergil’s patterning of characters in the Eclogues after existing narratives, his discussion of farming in the Georgics, and the related references to trees and shade in the Eclogues, can be read as reflecting metaphorically on the theory and practice of poetry in Rome in the late first century BCE. By comparing Vergil’s discussions of trees and farming with passages of explicit literary criticism in Horace, Cicero, and others, I show that Vergil structures the Eclogues and Georgics in a way that allows references to agriculture and the natural world to be read as metaphors not only for life, as some Georgics scholars have shown, but also for poetry. My first chapter demonstrates my method by discussing a specific, pointed allusion to Aratus and his Hellenistic reception in Vergil’s passage on the farmer’s nighttime activities (Geo. 1.291–296). Here, as throughout the dissertation, I argue that certain passages about trees and/or farming can also be seen as literal reflections of the terms of literary-critical metaphors, such as the “wakefulness” (agrypnie) for which Callimachus praises Aratus’s Phaenomena (Callimachus Epigram 27). My second, third, and fourth chapters discuss a coherent pattern of literary symbolism in Vergil’s references to trees, forests, shade, and grafting in the Eclogues (Ch. 2–3) and the iii Georgics (Ch. 4). In Chapters 2–3 I also argue that Vergil patterns the narratives of Eclogues 2, 8, and 10 after erotic narratives from Callimachus, Theocritus, and Gallus in order to represent the interaction between Gallan love elegy and Theocritean pastoral in the Eclogues through the love affairs of characters in these poems. In my conclusion I outline further patterns of metapoetic symbolism in Vergil and show that other Augustan poets both allude to Vergil’s metapoetic symbols and, using the same technique, devise metapoetic symbols of their own. iv For Franny. ... cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas quantum vere novo viridis se subicit alnus. v Acknowledgments Over the course of this project, I was supported financially, intellectually, and emo- tionally by a number of people and institutions, whose important contributions I gratefully acknowledge here. The research for this dissertation was carried out both at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and at the American Academy in Rome, where I was sup- ported by a Berthe Marti Affiliated Fellowship from the University of North Carolina and Bryn Mawr College. I am grateful to all three of these institutions for financial support. I am also grateful to library staff at the American Academy in Rome, who promptly acquired a number of books at my request, and who allowed me to spend many wakeful nighttime hours in the library. My reading of Vergil and Augustan poetry has changed a lot over the course of my years in Chapel Hill and year in Rome, and I owe thanks to the many friends and acquaintances with whom I have discussed Latin poetry over these years. Although I cannot hope to list all of these people, I owe special thanks, among others, to Dennis McKay, Chris Polt, Erika Zimmermann Damer, Chris Cudabac, Daniel Kiss, Christy Marquis, Massimo Giuseppetti, Jackie Elliott, and Scott McGill. I beg the pardon of anyone whom I have inadvertently omitted from this list. Particular thanks are owed to the members of my committee—Jim O’Hara, Sharon James, Stephen Harrison, James Rives, and William Race. All of them offered helpful advice, encouragement, and resistance. Stephen Harrison first encouraged me to write vi up the idea that became Chapter 1 of the present dissertation, and which prompted me to change the focus of my research; his comments and his published research on metapoetics helped me shape my own approach to the subject. Sharon James offered both encouragement and challenging resistance throughout my years at Chapel Hill, and especially during the research stages of this project. We have discussed Latin poetry, and especially elegy, at great length over these years, and although we still disagree on some issues, I look forward to continued discussions in the future. Jim O’Hara, my advisor, deserves greater thanks than I can express here. Jim taught me much of what I know about Latin poetry, and the process of working with him—on both my thesis and dissertation—has made me who I am as a scholar. Throughout graduate school, and especially throughout my research, he was generous with both encouragement and criticism (almost always constructive), and when I needed funding he generously found me work as a research assistant. He was generous also with both time and availability, and I will sorely miss working in an office across the hall from him. Finally, thanks are due most of all to my wife Franny, whose constant support and encouragement has been invaluable both to the completion of this project and to my personal well-being. I dedicate this dissertation to her as a token of my appreciation. vii Contents List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Aratus and Nighttime labor: A Self-Reflexive Metaphor in Geor- gics 1 8 1.1 Introduction: A Metapoetic Vignette . 8 1.2 Hellenistic Epigram and the Roman Reception of the Phaenomena . 10 1.3 A Metaliterary Vignette at Georgics 1.291–296 . 23 1.4 Conclusion . 34 2 Gallus, Acontius, and Elegy 36 2.1 Metanarratives and Metapoetic Symbolism . 37 2.2 The Story of Acontius as an Elegiac Metanarrative . 48 2.3 Two Genres in the Eclogues ....................... 54 2.4 Eclogues 2, 8, and 10 . 66 2.4.1 Eclogue 2 ............................. 67 2.4.2 Eclogue 8 ............................. 81 3 Gallus, Acontius, and the Metapoetics of Trees 95 3.1 Eclogue 10................................. 95 viii 3.1.1 The Elegiac Poet and the Pastoral Conceit . 102 3.1.2 The Pastoral Narrator and the Elegiac Conceit . 123 3.2 Trees and the Metapoetic Symbolism of the Eclogues . 133 3.2.1 Silvae ............................... 137 3.2.2 Arbores .............................. 152 3.2.3 Umbrae .............................. 162 4 The Metapoetics of Arboriculture in Georgics 2 170 4.1 Second Proem . 174 4.2 Natural and Artificial Propagation . 192 4.2.1 Ingenium and Ars ........................ 195 4.2.2 Personification and Natura Creatrix . 200 4.2.3 Metrical Feet on the Road of Poetry: Literary Double Meaning in Terms for Artificial Propagation . 204 4.3 The Problem of Shade . 214 4.3.1 On Not Being Lucretius: Spontaneous Trees . 216 4.3.2 Generic Imitation: Shoots and Shade . 225 4.3.3 Problems with Growing from Seed: Shadow and Belatedness . 228 4.4 Intertextual Grafting . 240 5 Connections and Conclusion 250 5.1 Transplanting and Intertextuality in the Aeneid . 250 5.2 Metapoetic Plowing in the Georgics ................... 253 5.3 Metapoetic Symbolism in Other Augustan Poets . 260 ix 5.4 Conclusion . 272 Bibliography 274 x List of Abbreviations Brink Brink, C. O., ed. 1963–1982. Horace on Poetry. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Clausen Clausen, W., ed. 1994. A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Coleman Coleman, R., ed. 1977. Vergil: Eclogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conington Conington, J., ed. 1865–1875. The Works of Virgil. London: Whit- taker. McKeown McKeown, J. C., ed. 1987–<1998>. Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary in four volumes. Liverpool and Wolfeboro, N. H.: Francis Cairns. Mynors Mynors, R. A. B., ed. 1990. Virgil: Georgics. Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press. OLD Glare, P. G. W., ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Thomas Thomas, R. F., ed. 1988. Virgil: Georgics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TLL Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. 1900–<2008>. The- saurus Linguae Latinae. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. xi Introduction Vergil is prolific in his use of metaphor to reveal his poetic program. In fact, com- pared to some of his contemporaries, he gives us very little information about his poetic program in any other form. Many of the metaphors he uses are highly allusive and depend for their meaning on the recognition of specific allusions. So in Eclogue 6 Vergil expresses his Callimacheanism in part by styling his poem as “fine-spun” (deductum carmen, 6.5), using a weaving metaphor that alludes to the metaphori- cal fineness (λεπτότης) of Callimachean poetry. Other metaphors are more or less conventional (although these are sometimes also specifically allusive), as when in the Georgics Vergil characterizes his progress through the poem as a chariot race or sea journey. On the handful of occasions when Vergil seems to be telling us something straightforward about his poem, as when he characterizes the Eclogues as “Sicilian”/“Syracusan” (= Theocritean; Ecl. 4.1, 6.1) verse or the Georgics as an “Ascraean” (= Hesiodic; Geo. 2.176) song, he seems at least partly to mislead us, since, as Farrell has shown, he makes these claims at the same time as his imitative program is departing from these models.1 By contrast, while other Augustan poets are likewise prolific in their allusive use of programmatic metaphors, they also make straightforward statements that help us to contextualize their metaphorical claims.