Memory in Vergil's Aeneid

Creating the Past

Aaron M. Seider

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781107031807
• eBook ISBN: 9781107287860
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Tracing the path from Troy's destruction to Rome's foundation, the Aeneid explores the transition between past and future. As the Trojans struggle to found a new city and the narrator sings of his audience's often-painful history, memory becomes intertwined with a crucial leitmotif: the challenge of being part of a group that survives violence and destruction only to face the daunting task of remembering what was lost. This book offers a new reading of the Aeneid that engages with critical work on memory and questions the prevailing view that Aeneas must forget his disastrous history in order to escape from a cycle of loss. Considering crucial scenes such as Aeneas' reconstruction of Celaeno's prophecy and his slaying of Turnus, this book demonstrates that memory in the Aeneid is a reconstructive and dynamic process, one that offers a social and narrative mechanism for integrating a traumatic past with an uncertain future.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One Turning toward Rome
• Chapter Two The challenge of Troy
• Chapter Three A personal affair
• Chapter Four The narrator’s song
• Chapter Five Imperatives of memory
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index locorum
• Index verborum
• Index