“Now I Have Forgotten All My Verses.” Social Memory in the Eclogues of Virgil and Calpurnius Siculus
Source
Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw, 3, (2013), pp. 13-28ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
Nederlandse Taal en Cultuur
Journal title
Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw
Volume
vol. 3
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 13
Page end
p. 28
Subject
niet-RU-publicatiesAbstract
This paper examines the use of social memory in the pastoral poetry of Virgil and Calpurnius
Siculus. A comparison of the references to Rome’s social memory in both these
works points to a development of this phenomenon in Latin bucolic poetry. Whereas Virgil’s
Eclogues express a genuine anxiety with the preservation of Rome’s ancient customs
and traditions in times of political turbulence, Calpurnius Siculus’s poems address issues
of a different kind with the use of references to social memory. Virgil’s shepherds see
their pastoral community disseminating: they start forgetting their lays or misremembering
verses, indicating the author’s concern with Rome’s social memory and, thereby,
with the prosperity and stability of the Res Publica. Calpurnius Siculus, on the other
hand, has his herdsmen strive for the emperor’s patronage and a literary career in the big
city, bored as they are by the countryside. They desire a larger, more cohesive and active
urban community in which they and their songs will receive the acclaim they deserve and
consequently live on in Rome’s social memory. Calpurnius Siculus’s poems are, however,
in contrast to Virgil’s, no longer concerned with social memory in itself.
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