Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-21T22:59:05.760Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Placement, Gender, Pedagogy: Virgil's Fourth Georgic in Print*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrew Wallace*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Abstract

The article examines the narrative conclusion of the Georgics, in which the nymph Cyrene distills from Proteus' tale of Orpheus and Eurydice a set of practical instructions for her son to carry out. It argues that the tendency to minimize or ignore Cyrene's crucial role at the end of the poem is inseparable from Virgil's attempt to inspect the mechanics of instruction. Renaissance editors, commentators, and illustrators grappled uneasily with Virgil's attempt to make gender and placement integral components of Cyrene's pedagogy, and with the notion that successful instruction would culminate in a scene in which the teacher might still need to be present.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Thanks to Nancy Lindheim, Elizabeth D. Harvey, Jeff Dolven, A.M. Keith, Theresa M. Krier, and Dana Dragunoiu for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. Paul Grendler, Craig Kallendorf, and an anonymous RQ reader made a number of helpful suggestions. Research for this project was made possible by a fellowship from the Princeton University Friends of the Library. I thank the Princeton University Library Department of Rare Books and Special Collections for permission to reproduce three illustrations from the Junius Morgan Collection of Virgil.

References

Batstone, William. 1997. “Virgilian Didaxis: Value and Meaning in the Georgics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale, 125-44. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Black, Robert. 1991. “Italian Renaissance Education: Changing Perspectives and Continuing Controversies.” Journal of the History of Ideas 52:315-34.Google Scholar
Black, Robert. 2001. Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bonner, S.F. 1977. Education in Ancient Rome. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. 1995. The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione's “Cortegiano.” University Park, PA.Google Scholar
Bushnell, Rebecca W. 1996. A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice. Ithaca.Google Scholar
Crane, Mary Thomas. 1993. Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England. Princeton.Google Scholar
Desmond, Marilyn. 1994. Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval “Aeneid.” Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Gale, Monica. 2000. Virgil on the Nature of Things: The “Georgics, “ Lucretius, and the Didactic Tradition. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gorrichon, Martine. 1979. “Sebastien Brant et l'lllustration des Oeuvres de Virgile d'Apres l'Edition Strasbourgeoise de 1502.” In Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Amstelodamensis: Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Amsterdam, 1973, eds. P. Tuynman, G.C. Kniper and E. Kessler, 440-52. Munich.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. 1997a. Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers. Ann Arbor, MI.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. 1997b. “Is the History of Reading a Marginal Enterprise? Guillaume Bude and his Books.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 91:139-57.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony and Lisa Jardine. 1986. From Humanism to the Humanities: EaUcation and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth-Century Europe. London.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul F. 1989. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore.Google Scholar
Griffin, Jasper. 1979. “The Fourth Georgic, Virgil, and Rome.” Greece and Rome 26:6180.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M. 1990. “Why is Diotima a Woman?” In One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, and Other Essays on Greek Love, 113-51. New York.Google Scholar
Humanist Educational Treatises. 2002. Ed. and trans. Craig Kallendorf. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Lucy. 2001. “To the Gardin att O: [Owthorpe] 7:th.” In Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology, eds. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, 280-81. Oxford.Google Scholar
Jardine, Lisa and Anthony Grafton. 1990. “'Studied for action': How Gabriel Harvey Read his Livy.” Past and Present 129:3078.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, Craig. 1999. Virgil and the Myth of Venice. Oxford.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, Craig. 2001. “The Aeneid Transformed: Illustration as Interpretation from the Renaissance to the Present.” In Poets and Critics Read Vergil, 121-48.Google Scholar
Keith, A.M. 2000. Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic. (Roman Literature and its Contexts.) Cambridge.Google Scholar
Krier, Theresa M. Forthcoming. “Genetrix: Cosmology and the Maternal Sea- Nymph of Mythopoeic Poetry.” In lrigaray and Premodern Cultures, eds. Theresa M. Krier and Elizabeth D. Harvey. London.Google Scholar
Lanham, Richard A. 1991. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. 2nd ed. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Leach, Eleanor Winsor. 1982. “Illustration as Interpretation in Brant's and Dryden's Editions of Vergil.” In The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor of Lessing J. Rosenwald, ed. Sandra Hindman, 175-210. Washington.Google Scholar
Lee, M. Owen. 1996. Virgil as Orpheus: A Study of the “Georgics.“ Albany, NY.Google Scholar
Marvell, Andrew. 1996. “Upon Appleton House.” In The Complete Poems, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno, 75-99. 1972. Reprint, London.Google Scholar
Miles, Gary B. 1980. Virgil's “Georgics“: A New Interpretation. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Morgan, Llewelyn. 1999. Patterns of Redemption in Virgil's “Georgics. “ Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mortimer, Ruth. 1986. “Vergil in the Light of the Sixteenth Century: Selected Illustrations. “ In Vergil at 2000: Commemorative Essays on the Poet and His Influence, ed. John D. Bernard, 159-84. New York.Google Scholar
Norbrook, David. 2000. Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1600. 1999. Pbk. reprint, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Nugent, S. Georgia. 1992. “Virgil's ‘Voice of the Women’ in Aeneid V.” Arethusa 25:255-92.Google Scholar
Nugent, S. Georgia 1994. “Mater Matters: The Feminine in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.” Colby Quarterly 30:179205.Google Scholar
Nugent, S. Georgia 1999. “The Women of'the Aeneid: Vanishing Bodies, Lingering Voices.” In Reading Vergil's “Aeneid,“ 251-70.Google Scholar
Ovid, . 1931. Fasti. Trans. James George Frazer. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Pasquier, Bernadette. 1992. Virgile illustre de la Renaissance a nos jours en France et en Italic Paris.Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel. 1987. Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valiry. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Pennington, Richard. 1982. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Works ofWenceslaus Hollar, 1607-1677. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Perkell, Christine G. 1989. The Poet's Truth: A Study of the Poet in Virgil's “Georgics. “ Berkeley.Google Scholar
Perkell, Christine G. 2001. “Pastoral Value in Vergil.” In Poets and Critics Read Virgil, 26-43.Google Scholar
Poets and Critics Read Vergil. 2001. Ed. Sarah Spence. New Haven.Google Scholar
Putnam, Michael C.J. 1979. Virgil's Poem of the Earth: Studies in the “Georgics. “ Princeton.Google Scholar
Rabb, Theodore K. 1960. “Sebastian Brant and the First Illustrated Edition of Vergil.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 21:186-99.Google Scholar
Reading Vergil's “Aeneid“: An Interpretive Guide. 2001. Ed. Christine Perkell. Norman, OK.Google Scholar
Reynolds, L.D. 1983. “Virgil.” In Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. L.D. Reynolds, 433-36. Oxford.Google Scholar
Richlin, A. 1983. The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor. New Haven.Google Scholar
Schiesaro, Alessandro. 1997. “The Boundaries of Knowledge in Virgil's Georgics!’ In The Roman Cultural Revolution, eds. Thomas Habinek and Alessandro Schiesaro, 63-89. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Segal, Charles P. 1993. “Orpheus From Antiquity to Today: Retrospect and Prospect.” In Vergil, ed. Craig Kallendorf, 203-49.Google Scholar
Servius, . 1881-84. Servii Grammatici Qui Feruntur in Vergilii Carmina Commentarii. Eds. Georg Thilo and Hermann Hagen. 3 vols. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Sherman, William H. 1995. John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance. Amherst, MA.Google Scholar
Spence, Sarah. 1988. Rhetorics of Reason and Desire: Vergil, Augustine, and the Troubadours. Ithaca.Google Scholar
Spence, Sarah. 1999. “Variumet Mutabile.-Voices of Authority in Aeneid 4.” In Reading Vergil's “Aeneid,“ 80-95.Google Scholar
Vergil. 1993. Ed. Craig Kallendorf. New York.Google Scholar
Virgil, . [1469?]. Opera. Rome. (Copinger 5999; IGI 10177.)*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1470. Opera. Venice. (Copinger 6003; IGI 10178.)*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1492. Georgica. Paris. (Copinger 6145.)*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1502. Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera. Strasbourg.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1504. Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera. Milan.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1506. P. Virgilii Maronis Mantuani vatis celeberrimi Georgica. Leipzig.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1515. Opera Vergiliana. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1529. Pub. Verg. Maro. Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1535. P. Vergilius Maro. Philippi Melanchthonis adnotatiunculis. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1556. P. Virgilii Maronis Georgica, P. Rami praelectionibus illustrata Georgica. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1561. P. Vergilii Maronis Poemata quae extant omnia. Zurich.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1589. The Bucoliks of Publius Virgilius Maro … . Together with his Georgiks. Trans. Abraham Fleming. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1620. Virgil's Eclogues, with his booke De Apibus. Trans. John Brinsley. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1649a. Les Oeuvres de Virgile. Trans. Michel de Marolles. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1649b. The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro. Trans. John Ogilby. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1654. The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro. Trans. John Ogilby. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1658. Publii Virgilii Maronis Opera. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1681. Virgile. Trans. Mofbieur de Martignac. Paris.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1697. The Works of Virgil. Trans. John Dryden. London.*Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1865-75. P. Vergilius Maronis Opera. The Works of Virgil with a Commentary. Ed. John Conington and Henry Nettleship. 2“d ed. 3 vols. London.Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1872-75. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Ed. Albert Forbiger. 4th ed. 3 vols. Leipzig.Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1990. Georgics. Ed. R.A.B. Mynors. Oxford.Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1998. Georgics. Ed. Richard F. Thomas. 2 vols. 1988. Pbk. reprint, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Virgil, . 1999. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. Rev. G.P. Goold. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, L.P. 1969. The “Georgics” of Virgil: A Critical Survey. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wiltshire, Susan Ford. 1989. Public and Private in Vergil's “Aeneid.“ Amherst.Google Scholar