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Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid
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This book by one of the preeminent Virgil scholars of our day is the first comprehensive study of ekphrasis in Virgil’s final masterpiece, the Aeneid. Virgil uses ekphrasis―a self-contained aside that generates a pause in the narrative to describe a work of art or other object―to tell us something about the grander text in which it is embedded, says Michael C. J. Putnam. Individually and as a group, Virgil’s ekphrases enrich the reader’s understanding of the meaning of the epic. Putnam shows how the descriptions of works of art, and of people, places, and even animals, provide metaphors for the entire poem and reinforce its powerful ambiguities.
Putnam offers insightful analyses of the most extensive and famous ekphrases in the Aeneid― the paintings in Juno’s temples in Carthage, the Daedalus frieze, and the shield of Aeneas. He also considers shorter and less well known examples―the stories of Ganymede, the Trojan shepherd swept into the sky by an amorous Jupiter; the fifty daughters of Danaus, ordered by their father to kill their husbands on their wedding night; and Virgil’s original tale of a domesticated wild stag whose killing sparks a war between Trojans and Italians. These ekphrases incorporate major themes of the Aeneid, an enduring formative text of the Western tradition, and provide a rich variety of interpretive perspectives on the poem.
Putnam offers insightful analyses of the most extensive and famous ekphrases in the Aeneid― the paintings in Juno’s temples in Carthage, the Daedalus frieze, and the shield of Aeneas. He also considers shorter and less well known examples―the stories of Ganymede, the Trojan shepherd swept into the sky by an amorous Jupiter; the fifty daughters of Danaus, ordered by their father to kill their husbands on their wedding night; and Virgil’s original tale of a domesticated wild stag whose killing sparks a war between Trojans and Italians. These ekphrases incorporate major themes of the Aeneid, an enduring formative text of the Western tradition, and provide a rich variety of interpretive perspectives on the poem.
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Genres
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 11,1998
This edition
- Format
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272 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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August 11, 1998 by Yale University Press
- ISBN
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9780300073539
- ASIN
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0300073534
- Language
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English
About the author
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Michael Courtney Jenkins Putnam is an American classicist specializing in Latin literature, but has also studied literature written in many other languages. Putnam has been particularly influential in his publications concerning Virgil‘s ‘'Aeneid‘'. He is the son of politician and businessman Roger Putnam. Putnam received his B.A., M.A., and Ph. D. from Harvard. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1959 he taught at Smith College for a year. He then moved on to teach at Brown University and served as W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics and a professor of comparative literature for 48 years before retiring in 2008. He was awarded the 1963 Rome Prize, and was later a Resident (1970) and Mellon Professor in Charge of the Classical School (1989-91). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996 and the American Philosophical Society in 1998.
He served as sole trustee of Lowell Observatory from 1967 to 1987. Asteroid 2557 Putnam was named in his and his father's honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 April 1982 (M.P.C. 6835).
He served as sole trustee of Lowell Observatory from 1967 to 1987. Asteroid 2557 Putnam was named in his and his father's honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 April 1982 (M.P.C. 6835).
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