David Scott Wilson-Okamura Virgil in the Renaissance Virgil in the Renaissance . David Scott Wilson-Okamura. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv+299.
2013; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 111; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/670286
ISSN1545-6951
Autores Tópico(s)Early Modern Spanish Literature
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeDavid Scott Wilson-Okamura Virgil in the Renaissance Virgil in the Renaissance. David Scott Wilson-Okamura. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xiv+299.John MulryanJohn MulryanSt. Bonaventure University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreDavid Scott Wilson-Okamura’s Virgil in the Renaissance is many things, but it is first of all a continuation of Domenico Comparetti’s Virgilio nel medio evo (1872), an attempt to do for the Renaissance Virgil what Comparetti achieved for Virgil in the Middle Ages. He focuses on Virgil’s importance and meaning for the Renaissance and cautions the reader to avoid assuming that Renaissance readers of Virgil agreed with our own ideas and emphases, particularly in our “Didocentric” fascination with Aeneas’s suicidal lover (234). Thus “there is some value, first, in reminding ourselves that what seems, in our own limited circles (whether of conversation, colleagues, scholarship, or merely century) obvious, permanent, and unarguable is actually contingent, temporary and hypothetical” (5). Nor can we assume that we have assimilated all possible interpretations of Virgil’s text, for “there are some interpretations so perverse they would never have occurred to most of us in a hundred years of concentrated cerebration” (5).Wilson-Okamura begins his analysis of the Renaissance Virgil with a query: Why do we still spell Virgil’s name with an i (Virgil), even though the Renaissance commentator Angelo Poliziano proved conclusively that it was originally spelled with an e (Vergil)? It turns out that the weight of custom and the belief that Latin was a living rather than a static language combined to suppress Poliziano’s discovery. Poliziano had his say; then “Europe yawned—and went on spelling the name as it had always done, with an i” (18).Although Ovid was a more popular poet in the Renaissance than Virgil, the latter poet was held in higher esteem: “Ovid may have been the most popular poet of the Renaissance, but Virgil was consistently the first poet of the Renaissance.…The market for Virgil’s text was apparently inexhaustible; it was matched, moreover, by an overwhelming appetite for commentaries on the text” (23–24). The point is confirmed by the author’s citation of Don Cameron Allen’s remark that “the early editions of Virgil’s Opera are the most profusely annotated classical texts the world has ever seen” (Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970], 140–41).Wilson-Okamura provides a detailed analysis of the commentaries, supplemented by two appendices testifying to the frequency of their appearance in Latin editions of Virgil’s works. Among the commentators Servius (late fourth century AD) was first in place with both allegorical and linguistic commentary, followed by the more plodding Donatus (a generation later than Servius but not known during the Middle Ages); the pedantic Badius Ascenius (text 1501); the complex, esoteric Cristoforo Landino (1424–1504); and the philologically oriented Giovanni Pierio Valeriano (1477–1558).Although the Renaissance vacillated between endorsing Homer or Virgil as the greatest of all poets, by the end of the period (when Homer’s texts became more accessible) informed judgment ultimately came down on the side of Homer. Homer was dismissed by some as vulgar and verbose, in contrast with Virgil’s alleged stylistic purity and concise style. However, Virgil’s position was contaminated by several factors: his obsession with style rendered his work derivative (“correct imitation is no substitute for a vigorous original” [139]), his dependence on patrons (Augustus, Maecenas) smacked of toadyism, and his passion for brevity denied him the luxury of providing a comprehensive poetical effect for his readers. Furthermore, Virgil’s legendary reputation as the chaste and modest poet, reticent in sexual matters, was challenged by some of his own poems that celebrated homoeroticism, cleverly sidestepped by commentators for centuries but something that even medieval and Renaissance commentators were aware of—including Servius. For example, in glossing the poem “Alexis” from Virgil’s Eclogues, the commentator Paolo Manuzio (text 1558) ignores the surface meaning of the poem to impose a bizarre allegorical interpretation on the text: “What looks on the surface, then, like a homosexual lovesong is really a petition for return of lost property” (114).When we move from style (“Virgil’s eloquence was one of the great, undeniable facts of literary criticism in the Renaissance” [141]) to interpretation, the Aeneid splits neatly into two parts: “From ancient times to the present, readers of Virgil have always divided the Aeneid into units of six books. The first six, modeled on Homer’s Odyssey, are about wandering. The last six, based on Homer’s Iliad, are about war” (146). As Wilson-Okamura goes on to observe, most commentaries focused on the first six books of the poem with special emphasis on book six, the descent to the underworld.The interpretation of Virgil is further complicated by the publication of two post-Virgilian works, both of which tended to focus on love interests in the Aeneid, as modern classicists do. The first was the anonymous Roman d’Eneas (Anjou, ca. 1160): “the sympathy with Dido that was latent in Virgil’s original is here overt and ostentatious: a conflation of Virgil’s Dido with Ovid’s in Heroides 7, she is a tragic queen, more sinned against than sinning” (233). The second, Maffeo Vegio’s (1407–58) supplement to the Aeneid, adds a thirteenth book to the poem and switches the love interest from Dido to Lavinia. Vegio’s interpretation is particularly persuasive, since his language incorporates the very language of Virgil himself. Some later editions of the Aeneid also included Vegio’s supplement, in effect making it part of the poem: “Between 1469, when it first appeared, and 1599, when Spenser died, the Aeneid was printed and reprinted at least 439 times. No fewer than 137 of these reprintings, or just under one-third, were accompanied by Vegio’s sequel” (247).Vegio’s good Latin, modeled on that of Virgil himself, incorporates the style of the author he annotates and describes. Meaning is also incorporated into the commentaries, but style is primary: “The one thing about Virgil that everyone in the Renaissance could agree to praise, critics and worshipers alike, was his style. That is the main reason why students read him in school, and why there was so much about Virgil’s language in the commentaries…if we want to read the epic that inspired Spenser and Tasso and Ariosto the way the poets read it, we must learn how to listen for sound as well sense, for style as well as meaning. The commentaries can help us with this; indeed that is one of the main things they were designed for” (250–51).Wilson-Okamura’s Virgil in the Renaissance is a witty and engaging book written in an accessible style. It takes a potentially dull subject and turns it into a carefully nuanced study that captures the sense of respect and awe the Renaissance humanists felt for Virgil, the master of Latin style who embodied their own concerns with decent Latin and elegant expression. As noted above, Wilson-Okamura demonstrates that an ability to apprehend Virgil as the Renaissance humanists saw him is the path to understanding the great vernacular epics of the period, from Ariosto and Tasso to Spenser. In sum, Wilson-Okamura’s study demonstrates that knowledge of how Virgil was apprehended during the Renaissance is essential to understanding and accessing the great literature of the period. He has written a fine book on an important subject that all Renaissance scholars should place on their reading lists. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 111, Number 1August 2013 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/670286 Views: 241Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.
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