Virgil's Aeneid and the tradition of Hellenistic poetry /

The chapters of this book were conceived and delivered in 1982 as the Sather Classical Lectures at Berkeley. Of that form, they retain a certain intimacy and geniality; for better audience understanding Clausen (Harvard University) provides his own excellent renderings of the quoted Greek and Latin passages. When there is occasion to resume some of the details of the plot, Clausen demonstrates that he is an expert storyteller. In choosing the main episodes of the poem for commentary, Clausen persuasively demonstrates that the Aeneid is an epic of a kind largely unprecedented-Homeric in form, Callimachean in style. As a rare connoisseur of Virgilian poetry, he gives accurate and elegant analyses of prosody, similes, metaphors, and highly descriptive passages known as ecphrases. The writer wears his erudition lightly, but the solidity of his learning is evidenced in the detailed footnotes and appendixes on varied topics. Clausen cultivates an Attic and deliberately unrhetorical style, as may be perceived in the final words describing the death of Turnus: ``this terrible, final act of pietas required of the hero, which the poet, for reasons sufficient to his imagination, will not mitigate, will not explain away.'' The lectures are in their way an act of pietas to Virgil's poetic genius, and should be required reading for any advanced student of ancient poetry.-C.E. Fantazzi, University of Windsor

Clausen's thesis is laudable: Careful analysis of Hellenistic influence and imitation in Virgil is long overdo. As Clausen says, ``Virgil imitates Homer but as a Hellenistic poet would.'' Quoting extensively from Greek and Latin texts, Clausen tries to place Virgil's literary choices and emotional orientation in the Alexandrian tradition. The analysis he offers is more in the manner of commentary than criticism and his excessive retelling of plots obscures argumentation. There are detailed footnotes and a clear love of the Aeneid throughout, but attention to complex narrative strategies and polysemous layerings is virtually absent. Clausen, nevertheless, raises questions of central concern to future studies of Virgilian poetics. Stephen Scully, Classical Studies Dept., Boston Univ. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.