Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture)

714 Pages·1995·2.67 MB·English

by  Brooks Otis

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Page i
Virgil:
A Study in Civilized Poetry
Page ii
OKLAHOMA SERIES IN CLASSICAL CULTURE
Series Editor
Susan Ford Wiltshire, Vanderbilt University
Advisory Board
Alfred S. Bradford, University of Oklahoma
Ward W. Briggs, Jr., University of South Carolina
Susan Guettel Cole, State University of New York, Buffalo
Carolyn J. Dewald, University of Southern California
Thomas M. Falkner, The College of Wooster
Elaine Fantham, Princeton University
Nancy Felson-Rubin, University of Georgia
Arther Ferrill, University of Washington
Helene P. Foley, Barnard College
Ronald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto
Thomas R. Martin, College of the Holy Cross
A. Geoffrey Woodhead, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge/Ohio
State University
Page iii
Virgil
A Study in Civilized Poetry
By
Brooks Otis
Foreword by Ward W. Briggs, Jr.
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
NORMAN AND LONDON
Page iv
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Otis, Brooks.
Virgil, a study in civilized poetry / by Brooks Otis ;
foreword by Ward W. Briggs, Jr.
p. cm.(Oklahoma series in classical culture; v. 20)
Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8061-2782-1 (alk. paper)
1. VirgilCriticism and interpretation. 2. Latin poetry
History and criticism. 3. RomeIn literature. 4. Rome
Civilization.
I. Title. II. Series.
PA6825.08 1995
871'.01dc20 95-17062
CIP
Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry is Volume 20 in the Oklahoma
Series in Classical Culture.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc.
Oklahoma Paperbacks edition published 1995 by the University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. This
edition published by arrangement with Oxford University Press,
Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, England. Copyright © 1964 by
Oxford University Press. Foreword by Ward W. Briggs, Jr., copyright
© 1995 by the University of Oklahoma Press. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. First printing of the University of
Oklahoma Press edition, 1995.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Page v
SORORIBUS FAXONIANIS
Page vii
Foreword
By any measure 19631965 were anni mirabiles not only for Virgilian
studies but also for Latin literary criticism. In those three years many
works on Virgil were published: Friedrich Klingner's Virgils Georgica
(Zurich, 1963), G. N. Knauer's Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen,
1964), the second edition of Viktor Pöschl's Die Dichtkunst Virgils
(Wiesbaden, 1964); R. G. Austin's commentary on Aeneid 2 (Oxford,
1964), and Michael Putnam's The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge,
Mass., 1965). Also published during this time were Adam Parry's
enormously influential article "The Two Voices of Virgil's Aeneid,"
Arion 2 (1963) 66-80, and Wendell Clausen's "An Interpretation of the
Aeneid," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68 (1964): 139-47.
Arguably the most important publication of this remarkable, though
brief, golden age was Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry, Brooks
Otis's first book, published at the age of 55. Even in this sterling
crowd, the book's importance was attested almost immediately by
lengthy reviews and frequent citations, by Otis' promotion to Olive
Palmer Professor of Humanities at Stanford University in 1964, and
by the American Philological Association's 1966 Goodwin Award.
A glimpse at the bibliographical appendices (1, 4-6, 8) shows that, like
the work of the poet that is its subject, the book's quality is all the
more remarkable when compared to the tedious and narrow efforts
that had lately preceded it. Virgilian studies in the decade before Otis's
book appeared were, in the words of G. S. Rousseau, "at a low point,
reduced to bibliography and mathematical counts."1 As Cicero had
been the leading epic poet at Rome before Virgil, so the leading
Virgilian in America before Otis was George Duckworth (19031972),
who devoted much of his writing on structural analysis and metrical
dissection to the empty citation of previous authorities.2 Duckworth's
Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil's Aeneid (Ann Arbor,
1962) was the
1 Rousseau, review of Virgil, Classical Journal 60 (1964-5): 138.
2 On the foremost British Virgilian, W. F. J. Knight (1895-1964), see G. W.
Knight, Jackson Knight: A Biography (Oxford, 1974). R. D. Williams (1917-
1986), a leading Virgilian of the next two decades, had published his Oxford
commentaries on Aeneid 5 (1960) and Aeneid 3 (1962).
Page viii
result of a trail of investigation pursued in the Eclogues by Otto
Skutsch1 (following P. Maury and G. Stégen2), which had focused the
study of the Eclogue book upon the proportions and arrangement of
the poems. In other criticism, understanding of the Georgics had
hardly progressed since Erich Burck's 1929 article on the structural
significance of didactic connectives.3
Otis had begun to think seriously about Virgil shortly after taking his
second job, at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 1935. His first
concern led to one of his most important contributions: "How can a
poet go on using myth when he no longer believes it?"4 He
assimilated the work of the other great writers on Virgil: Norden,
Glover, Cartault, Klingner, his Doktorvater E. K. Rand, Constans,
Knight, Perret, Büchner, Pöschl, and others.5 All have left their
imprint on his work. But clearly the most significant was Richard
Heinze.6 Heinze impressed upon Otis the value of minute and
sensitive stylistic criticism in service to the larger view of Virgil as an
advocate of the self-sacrifice that is the heritage of the noble Roman
past. These views appealed to Otis as one who had grown up with
strong religious and political beliefs in a family as old as the country.
Brooks Otis was born in Boston 10 June 1908 to a distinguished line
of patriots and divines that includes Phillips Brooks, John
1 Skutsch, "Zu Vergils Eklogen," Rheinisches Museum 99 (1956): 193-
201.
2 Maury, "Le secret de Virgile et l'architecture des Bucoliques," Lettres
d'humanité 3 (1944): 71-147; and Stégen, Étude sur cinq Bucoliques de
Virgile (1, 2, 4, 5, 7) (Namur, 1955). See in opposition to Maury, E. de Saint-
Denis, "Douze années d'études virgiliennes: L'architecture des Bucoliques"
Information Littéraire 6 (1954): 139-47, 184-88.
3 Burck, "Die Komposition von Vergils Georgika," Hermes 64 (1929): 279-
321.