Summary of Vergil's Georgics and the Traditions of
Ancient Epic: The Art of Allusion in Literary History by Joseph Farrell, University of Pennsylvania
This book argues that there is a detailed and extensive program of literary
allusion in the Georgics, one that moves basically from
Hesiod in the first
book, to Lucretius in the middle two, to Homer in the fourth. This
program entails an analytical style of allusion, by means of which
source
texts are interpreted through selective borrowing and juxtaposition
with
other sources. The direction of allusion outlined in the poem, from
Hesiod
and Alexandrian poetics to Homer and heroic epic, illuminates the
development of VergilŐs career from the Callimacheanism of the
Eclogues
to the full-fledged epic style of the Aeneid. At the same
time, VergilŐs use
of earlier poetry and criticism effectively characterizes the
Georgics not as
a versified agricultural treatise, but as the culmination of a
distinguished
tradition of philosophical poetry.