Joseph Farrell, "The Vergilian Century"
My paper will develop and defend the thesis presented in the prospectus
for this conference. The most salient points are as follows:
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Criticism of Vergil, and of the Aeneid in particular, was the principal
driving force behind the development of Latin literary studies during the
twentieth century.
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The main questions addressed by Vergilians and the main ways in which they
went about answering those questions, were shaped more by modern historical
events than by forces internal to the discipline of Latin studies.
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The development of "pessimistic" interpretations of Vergil's work in the
second half of the century was not, as some of its opponents have charged,
an anachronism caused by New Left politics. Rather, the extreme polarization
of Vergilian criticism into rival camps of "optimists" and "pessimists"
was caused by an excessively polarized political climate brought on by,
first, the rise of totalitarian states and, second, the rivalry between
the two superpowers throughout the period of the Cold War.
I will draw further parallels between the political situation. the rise
of New Critical reading strategies, with their emphasis on carefully balanced
tensions within the work of verbal art, and the hegemony of American Vergilians
during this period.
The paper will ask whether this period of Vergilian/American ascendency
has drawn to a close along with the Cold War, and is being replaced by
an aetas Ovidiana that is better adapted to a "new world order" that is
characterized not by a binary opposition between two superpowers, but by
an uncertain relationship between the one remaining superpower and the
rest of the world, where power is diffused among a multitude of resurgent
and emergent regional powers around the globe. This theme will be
explared further at a subsequent conference that will be held in Dublin
a about a year's time.