Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID
    Unavailable
    Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID
    Unavailable
    Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID
    Ebook220 pages4 hours

    Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID

    By James J. O'Hara

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Here James O'Hara shows how the deceptive nature of prophecy in the Aeneid complicates assessment of the poem's attitude toward its hero's achievement and toward the future of Rome under Augustus Caesar. This close study of the language and rhetorical context of the prophecies reveals that they regularly suppress discouraging material: the gods send promising messages to Aeneas and others to spur them on in their struggles, but these struggles often lead to untimely deaths or other disasters only darkly hinted at by the prophecies. O'Hara finds in these prophecies a persistent subtext that both stresses the human cost of Aeneas' mission and casts doubt on Jupiter's promise to Venus of an "endless empire" for the Romans. O'Hara considers the major prophecies that look confidently toward Augustus' Rome from the standpoint of Vergil's readers, who, like the characters within the poem, must struggle with the possibility that the optimism of the prophecies of Rome is undercut by darker material partially suppressed. The study shows that Vergil links the deception of his characters to the deceptiveness of Roman oratory, politics, and religion, and to the artifice of poetry itself. In response to recent debates about whether the Aeneid is optimistic or pessimistic, O'Hara argues that Vergil expresses both the Romans' hope for the peace of a Golden Age under Augustus and their fear that this hope might be illusory.

    Originally published in 1990.

    The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateJul 14, 2014
    ISBN9781400860876
    Unavailable
    Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID

    Related to Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID

    Titles in the series (6)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Ancient Egyptian Underworld

      May 23, 2019

      The Ancient Egyptian Underworld
      10 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jun 16, 2022

      Last year I reported on a curious tradition from the Bassa people of Cameroon regarding falls of fish, crabs and other creatures from the sky [FT404:71]. Now I can share a case of fish falls embedded in a creation myth, as told by the Akuapem of sout

      11 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Sep 9, 2021

      Classical Corner
      4 min read

    • Article

      Other Ways of Seeing

      Feb 4, 2021

      Other Ways of Seeing
      7 min read

    • Article

      Edgar Allan Poe’s Other Obsession

      Jun 11, 2021

      This article was published online on June 11, 2021. In the early and macabre days of coronavirus shutdowns, Edgar Allan Poe was trending. “The Masque of the Red Death,” his Gothic tale from 1842, became in March of 2020 a go-to source for allegory: A

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus

      Aug 22, 2022

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus
      5 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Dec 2, 2021

      The World Of Writing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Wonderful Things

      Sep 7, 2023

      SHORTLISTED IN WM’S TUTANKHAMUN POETRY COMPETITION WERE: Guy Carter, Petersfield, Hampshire; Christine Griffin, Hucclecote, Gloucester; Sarah Das Gupta, Mamuden, Essex; Tracey Kitchen, Daventry, Northamptonshire; Lesley Mason, Norwich, Norfolk; Julie

      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jun 11, 2020

      Books
      3 min read

    • Article

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?

      May 28, 2019

      What Makes a Poet Difficult?
      6 min read

    • Article

      On The Dark Side

      Jul 14, 2022

      Mark Norman & Tracey Norman The History Press 2021 Hb, 174pp, £14.99, ISBN 9780750998017 There is certainly darkness a-plenty within the world of folklore; what Chthonic treasures will be found in Dark Folklore? Its five chapters offer a bewitching a

      4 min read

    • Article

      Henry Vaughan’s Eternal Alchemy

      Apr 16, 2021

      What faith teaches is that we're all exiles from that Zion that is eternity, to which we shall one day return. What Vaughan understands is that if we seek eternity, it is now. The post Henry Vaughan’s Eternal Alchemy appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      Miscellany

      Sep 28, 2023

      Miscellany
      17 min read

    • Article

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems

      Nov 28, 2017

      Solving Riddles, Reading Poems
      6 min read

    • Article

      In Memoriam

      Dec 13, 2019

      His voice was immediately recognizable to millions of opera fans worldwide, but he was not a singer. For over 25 years Toronto-based Father Owen Lee was the pre-eminent radio voice providing insights, interpretations, and commentaries on operas for M

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 24, 2022

      CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS The very interesting report on ‘Man Of Russia’ and his outlandish claims about giant trees [FT415:9] got me thinking

      14 min read

    • Article

      From Paradise Lost To The Lord Of The Rings: Top 10 Epics In Fiction | Stephanie Sy-Quia

      Nov 10, 2021

      What are epics? Typically, they are defined first by their length: they are traditionally long, and poems (this being the older, oral form). They often concern male heroes fighting a good fight (against an enemy either monstrous or geopolitical), and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms

      Sep 18, 2019

      “An aphorism,” Friedrich Nietzsche aphoristically wrote, “is an audacity.” Exploring the pithiest of phrases, from Ben Franklin to Susan Sontag. The post The Universe in a Sentence: On Aphorisms appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      Twelve Ways to Resurrect the Dead, Which Is to Say: To Write

      Dec 14, 2022

      1. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (Chronicle Books, 2015) translated by Ogden Goelet, Raymond Faulkner, Carol A. R. Andrews, J. Daniel Gunther, James Wasserman. On not dying a second time. Nor losing your heart in the g

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stories in Formaldehyde: The Strange Pleasures of Taxonomizing Plot

      Oct 2, 2020

      There is something to be said about the cool rectilinear logic that claims any story can be stripped down to its raw schematics and analyzed as fundamental, universal, eternal plots that have existed before Gilgamesh’s cuneiform was wedged into wet c

      16 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Aug 11, 2022

      Classical Corner
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Magic Of The Duchy

      Nov 30, 2023

      The Magic Of The Duchy
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Deep Time of Walden Pond

      May 10, 2018

      A careful reading of Walden; or, Life in the Woods makes it clear that Thoreau never intended his cabin to be a solitary hermitage, although fans and detractors alike often misunderstand this. It was more an author’s workshop than a fortress of isola

      16 min read

    Reviews for Death and the Optimistic Prophecy in Vergil's AENEID

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words