Philip Hardie, 'Toyboys and emperors. Another look at Ganymede'
This paper was originally prompted by my disagreement with Michael Putnam
over the Aen. 5 ecphrasis when reviewing his recent book. What it's
grown into is a close reading of the passage (5.249-57) as an illustration
of some of the themes and approaches of recent Virgilian criticism - ecphrasis,
point of view, (historical) allegory, mise en abyme, erotics. I have tried
to contextualise it in such a way as to give a feel for the wider history
of recent Virgilian criticism. In terms of my own work, I suppose in a
way it's a return to the 'Fascist' (as some had it!) Tendenz of Cosmos
and Imperium, but revisited after my exposure to a lot of other
things in the meantime.