| During the eighteenth century in Germany, the increasing preferment of Homer over Vergil offers an straightforward means of presenting the paradigm shift from a Latin to a Greek model. This approach, however, has the disadvantage that it rests within the categories of analysis provided by the eighteenth century. For that reason it fails to account adequately for the German rejection of the Latin poet. This dissertation argues for the recognition of other Vergils in addition to the Vergil of high literary discourse. Furthermore, the particular features of these several Vergils will depend on the concerns which shape the cultural spheres from which they emerge. The areas examined are: translation, pedagogy, scholarship, pastoral theory, pastoral literature itself and epic. The inter-relation between them will not be direct, nor result in a uniform image of Vergil; rather they will produce a composite image.;This study, then, has a three-fold purpose: first, to provide an interpretative account of Vergil's virtual removal from the German canon during the century; second, to present an example of the methodological complexities of reception; and third, to offer a means of approaching some of the central cultural developments in Germany during the eighteenth century.;A gap occurs between the ostensible devaluation of Vergil undertaken shortly after the middle of the century first by Winckelmann, Lessing, and then pursued by Christian Gottlob Heyne and Herder, and the use of Vergil in literature. While the imperatives of the aesthetic discourse may compel the dismissal of Vergil, the embeddedness of the Vergilian topoi in the generic expectations and the familiarity with his texts ensure that creative, even if unacknowledged, rewritings of a Vergilian original do occur. This does not occur in the epic genre which, despite the efforts of Klopstock and Bodmer, proves essentially defunct; the genre does not encompass the age's more vibrant themes. In pastoral poetry, however, the Vergilian example provides a poetic model readily adaptable to the eighteenth-century concern for nature. The narrative which contains the individual readings substantiating this claim seeks to relate the use of Vergil to the articulation of era's larger concerns. |
