Revelle College
Humanities 2 Lerer 2017 Opening lectures and classesThis is a course about love. It looks at a range of literary and religious writings to explore how desire mediates action, how it provokes language, and how it shapes individual lives and social organizations. Love is carnal and spiritual in all the works we will examine, and the tensions between these two fall along the following axes:Duty and desire: what is a person’s obligation? Who or what shapes that obligation,and what are the rewards of performing it? What happens when that obligationruns counter to what you want or want to do?Piety and politics: what does it mean to be pious? How can we understand obedience notjust to the state or to your human authorities but to an idea of an overarchingdivinity or higher set of principles? Are political structures founded on religiousscaffolding? Can one be both pious and political at the same time?Memory and action: what does it mean to remember something? Are our memoriesto be trusted? How does memory goad us into action? How does memorygoad us into speech?Rhetoric and reality: how do we convince or move others through language? What is thepurpose of rhetoric? How is love a form of rhetoric, or, put another way, isthe rhetoric of love seduction? If rhetoric has its origins in the law courts andthe pulpit (which it does), what happens when we press it into the service of other activities – for example, is the language of love really akin to legal persuasion; isthe language of religion akin to the language of love; are both akin to political oratory?Do we trust eloquent people, or mistrust them?Western literary culture concerns itself by and large with these issues, and for over 1500 years, the terms of these debates and discussions was shaped through a reading of Virgil’s Aeneid. The Aenied was the schoolbook par excellence: children were forced to memorize and recite whole passages; they were taught Latin grammar and expression from its idioms. The Aeneid was a handbook of politics as well. Rulers used it constantly, almost as a kind of bible. In fact, it was a common activity for 1000 years to take a copy of your Aeneid and open it at random and point to a line and find that as a kind of fortune telling. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne of England in 1558, coins were struck with the motto, “Dux femina facti,” a woman rules – a phrase from book 1 of the Aeneid. The Aeneid was a handbook of love; the story of Dido and Aeneis prompted the rise of romance writing in European vernaculars; it was one of the first books ever printed; it stimulated the rise of opera in the 17th century.We read the Aeneid not just for its own sake but for the sake of all of those who come between us and the age of Rome. Literary history, in many ways, is a history of reading Virgil.Who was Virgil, what is his poem about, and how can we begin to approach it in its cultural context?There are many ways of coming to Virgil and to the Aeneid for the first time. But it seems to me that the most important things you need to know are the following:That Virgil lived during a time of political upheaval in Rome – that he himself was at the epicenter of power and patronage, and that he had as his primary audience not the everyday citizen but the aristocracy and the leaders of the empire. His poem is imbued with politics largely because it is a poem about political patronage of literature itself and the creation of a national epic for a ruling group that needed to legitimate itself by having a national epic.This issue of epic and empire, or nation and narration, leads to the second thing you need to know: that Virgil created for himself, self-consciously, a literary career. Indeed, you could say that Virgil really invented an idea of a literary career – a career that moved through particular forms and genres, that had a beginning, middle, and end, and that was designed to establish himself as a public author: for his own time and the future. Let me develop these two points: why does a nation need a narrative; why does an empire need an epic? The Greek literary inheritance for Virgil was tied up with an ethical, moral, and social sense of Greekness and Greek ideals: these came to be ideals of philosophical inquiry (through the traditions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle); legal and political rhetoric (through the traditions of Gorgias, Isocrates, and Aristotle as well); civic drama (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes); lyric poetry (through the traditions of Sappho and other lyricists); the praise of athletic prowess (Pindar and the Olympian odes); and primary, oral epic (through Homer and Hesiod). These were not traditions keyed to the maintenance of a Greek imperial project; they were traditions keyed to the maintenance of Greekness: particular ideals of family, city-state citizenship and democratic participation, literary aesthetics, and individual martial/athletic/creative achievement. What Roman imperial culture did was distill these many forms, traditions, and inheritances into an idea of political identity as a story you tell. Indeed, we are familiar with this notion, as so much of early American republican identity was built on Roman models: Washington himself was cast as a classical hero; Virgil and Cicero were the two poles of an idealized eighteenth-century education. What we have is the notion that political and social identity is keyed to a particular narrative of action, a particular cast of characters, and a particular moral telos – a goal. Think of Washington, for example, and you think of stories (true or not): chopping down the cherry tree, crossing the Delaware River. Think of Lincoln and you think of stories: the young boy chopping wood, reading by the fire, debating Stephen Douglas, giving the Gettysburg Address, emancipating slaves, being assassinated. What Virgil did for Augustan Rome was create a coherent narrative of founding based on the materials he inherited from the Greek literary tradition. He filled his narrative with heroes, with great speeches, with remarkable events, and with a core set of values that were operating in Roman society but which he effectively codified in narrative form.These issues come together in the following:Background:Troy: the story of the Trojan War; the foundations of Mediterranean culture and politics;male/female relationships defined by abduction of HelenHomer: Iliad and Odyssey; the Homeric model of direct epic narrative; the techniqueof in medias res narration; Homeric character; Gods, heroes, epithetsRome:History: the founding of Rome and the search for Trojan lineagePolitics: the Julian dynasty; the imperial projectLatinity: the making of the Latin language as an imperial as well as literary languageCulture:Duty (pietas)Family (gens)Political home (patria)Literary form:Epic: primary vs. secondary; oral vs. literate; Greek vs. LatinRhetoric: oral and political/forensic performance; the development of figures of speech;literary performance as keyed to legal and political oratory; ideals of socialeloquenceSimile: the epic simile as a Vergilian form; its literary and political functionWhat is at stake in all of these issues is a complex set of notions about love and desire: love of family, love of nation, love of duty, and love of another individual. Let me just pause and say that what early Christianity does, in essence, is take these Roman notions of love as externally directed activities and transforms them into spiritually directed activities. The Romans worshipped, or venerated, or respected their deities. But they did not LOVE them in the way in which early Christian writers such as Paul enjoined Christians to LOVE GOD. The idea that God was love itself (as opposed to God embodying law, or retribution, or paternalistic care, or creative will, or any of the other things that characterize him in the Old Testament) – this idea of God AS love is new. But it trades on the Roman notions of love that were developed in social, sexual, and political contexts. So, one way to approach the Aeneid, Roman culture, the classical western tradition is as a set of narratives about love in all its forms and the tensions between love of various kinds – whether it is the tension between amor and pietas in the Aeneid, or the tension between caritas and cupiditas in Paul and Augustine. Let me begin, therefore, by turning to the opening of the Aneid to explore how Virgil works his literary, social, culture, political, and erotic magic – both for his time, and ours.Think of Book I as a story of narrations. How do we judge the verisimilitude of the story, and in turn, the authority of the teller? What follows is a review of Book I keyed to rhetorical performance, notions of telling and remembering, and the way in which the poem sets out its primary tasks: to move, to argue, to teach, to entrance.Book I: Aeneas and his men, having left Troy, are overtaken by a great storm; the fleet is scattered; Aeneas makes it, with seven ships, to the north coast of Africa. He meets Venus, his mother, disguised as a hunting girl; she tells him to head for Carthage, where he is reunited with his companions and meets the Queen of Carthage, Dido. Dido arranges a great feast; Venus sends her other son, Cupid, disguised as Aeneas’ own son (Ascanius), and instructs him to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas.The prologueInvocationThe central cause or purpose of the poemThe StormJuno and AeolusAeneasNeptuneLanding in AfricaInterlude – Jove and Venus; Jove’s prophecyArrival in CarthageVenus and AeneasAeneas arrives; the temple; meets DidoIlioneus’ speech; Aeneas and DidoThe BanquetPreparingVenus and Cupid; Ascanius kidnappedThe banquet itself and the song of IopasAeneid, Bk. I:Opening: statement of argument; origin of causes; question of character; question of proof; the epic begins as legal discourse. “Tell me the reason, Muse”: rhetorical cause (Musa, mihi causas memora); Juno: memory; Mandlebaum lines 41-42 (= Latin 26-27)Aeolus’s speech (M.110ff); rhetorical causes; question of “task” (Lat. labor).Sonic effects: M’s translation 144-61; notice alliteration, rhyme, assonance; use of sonic effect to mime the subject of the action. (I will compare with the Latin original).The uses of the simile: Neptune (M 200-22Aeneas as public orator (M 276-89); NB how Aeneas seeks to capture the attention, benevolence, and docility of his audience. Rhetoric and cookery: M 290-311; the feast and the speech; the associations of public speechmaking and group eating. Venus’s speech as forensic argument; the law court of Olympus; M 320-53; NB esp.The questions: “What is his crime?” and later “What motive, Father, made you change.” NB: the uses of anaphora here (as in original; what-clauses = quid-clauses).History and rhetoric: BK I as a story of narrations. How do we judge the verisimilitude of the story, and in turn, the authority of the teller? NB: Venus’s story of Dido: M 474-523. Note here the following: her appeal to effective arrangement (tracing chief events in order); the uses of fabulation, of dream vision and imagery (imago); of aphorism – “dux femina facti” a woman leads – and of rhetorical question.Aeneas’s response: self-presentation as narration. Sum pius Aeneas (M535); cause: “I seek out Italy.” The use of the imagery of the “way.” V’s response ends with “follow where this pathway leads” te ducit via (M 572); NB: compare the uses of the imagery of the via in the methodological remarks of the RaH. The bee simile: M 610ff; central device of epic.Ekphrasis: M645ff“With many tears and sighs he feeds / his soul on what is nothing but a picture” (M 658-59). Lat: inani pictura. Ilioneus’s political speech: M 735ffDido’s response: 792ff: NB: “Who has not heard of Troy?” Rhetorical question. Aeneas’s appearance, M 825ff, as a kind of birth.Naming and identity, memory and fame: Tunc ille Aeneas . . . . (M865)Iopas and his bardic tale of creation: M 1033ff.Dido and metaphor: She drank long love.The final request for a self-history from Aeneas: tell us all things from the first beginning” Cf. Iopas’s story. ................
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