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The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's Aeneid by Riggs Alden Smith is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's Aeneid about?

One of the masterpieces of Latin and, indeed, world literature, Virgil's Aeneid was written during the Augustan "renaissance" of architecture, art, and literature that redefined the Roman world in the early years of the empire. This period was marked by a transition from the use of rhetoric as a means of public persuasion to the use of images to display imperial power. Taking a fresh approach to Virgil's epic poem, Riggs Alden Smith argues that the Aeneid fundamentally participates in the Augustan shift from rhetoric to imagery because it gives primacy to vision over speech as the principal means of gathering and conveying information as it recounts the heroic adventures of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome. Working from the theories of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Smith characterizes Aeneas as a voyant-visible , a person who both sees and is seen and who approaches the world through the faculty of vision. Engaging in close readings of key episodes throughout the poem, Smith shows how Aeneas repeatedly acts on what he sees rather than what he hears. Smith views Aeneas' final act of slaying Turnus, a character associated with the power of oratory, as the vi

Who reads The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's Aeneid?

Author

Riggs Alden Smith

Publisher

University of Texas Press ; Combined Academic [distributor

Published

2006

Language

EN

ISBN

9780292796829

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, History, Literary Criticism