Cultural and poetic response in Vergil's 'Eclogues' (Roman Republic)

This dissertation investigates the role of response in Vergil's Eclogues, as a principle that organizes the collection intertextually, structurally and generically. Responsive structures are woven into the fabric of pastoral through such motifs as echo, singing-contests, and gift-exchanges. Scholars have tended to view these sorts of pastoral response as creating closed systems of perfect reciprocity (a landscape that echoes a singer's voice; a song that responds precisely to that of an earlier singer; a gift that compensates a singer for a song), but have neglected the role of response as a dynamic process that incorporates change and progression. Vergil's model for response is that of amoebaean song, which grows and develops as respondents pick up and develop themes stated by another singer. Vergil contrasts these productive, changing forms of response with static systems of response, which are sterile and unproductive. At the same time, response presents a tension between responsive doubles that complement their originals and those that threaten to replace them. The first chapter examines the intertextual role of echo in the Eclogues. Echo introduces new voices into the pastoral landscape, in a relationship of harmony or dissonance. Chapter two expands the focus of response to show how the dramatic form of the central Eclogues puts into play competing conceptions of pastoral value. Chapter three uses the third and fourth Eclogues as a case study of response between poems, showing how the Theocritean themes of Ecl. 3 interact with the generically higher, Roman themes of the fourth. Finally, chapter four shows how pastoral's responsive structures are also present in Roman villas of the late Republic. Villas' artificial landscapes present an interplay between categories of Greek and Roman that reflects Vergil's adaptation of Theocritus' Greek pastoral world.