Pearcy, 'Virgil's Epic Technique', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9410
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9410-pearcy-virgils

ALSO SEEN

Richard Heinze, <i>Virgil's Epic Technique</i>, tr. Hazel and
David Harvey and Fred Robinson.  Berkeley:  The University of
California Press, 1993.  Pp. xiv, 396.  $48.00.  ISBN
0-520-06444-5.
     Noted by Lee T. Pearcy -- The Episcopal Academy

     Every time I teach the Aeneid, I consult <i>Virgils epische
Technik</i>, but this welcome new translation provided me with an
opportunity actually to read Heinze's book; to see it, that is,
as a whole and to think about what it means. Vergilians know how
easy it is to use Heinze's clearly organized and amply documented
account of Vergil's poetic aims and methods.  Are you about to
lead a class in discussing the character of Dido?  Look at Part
I, Chapter 3.  Have your students asked about the chronology of
the action in the <i>Aeneid</i>?  Show them Part II, Chapter 2
("Invention"), Subchapter iii ("The Action"), Section c ("Time
and Place"), Subsection 1 ("Timetable").  The Harvey-Robinson
translation will give teachers, even those for whom knowing
German has not been a prerequisite for teaching Latin, access to
a significant work of scholarship and interpretation.  How
significant?  As I read <i>Virgil's Epic Technique</i>, I was
struck again and again by a sense of recognition.  I had heard
this before--in Gilbert Highet's famous <i>Aeneid</i> class at
Columbia, in Brooks Otis' <i>Virgil, A Study in Civilized
Poetry</i>, everywhere in fact in the Vergilian scholarship of
mid-century.  But as Antonie Wlosok's introduction reminds us,
when the first edition of <i>Virgils epische Technik</i> appeared
in 1903, it set forth a revolutionary approach to the
<i>Aeneid</i>.  Few people then would have acknowledged that
Vergil had a poetic technique, epic or otherwise.  Readers in the
nineteenth century dismissed the <i>Aeneid</i> as unoriginal,
derivative, and uninspired.  Now even readers who disagree about
every other aspect of the <i>Aeneid</i> agree that Vergil must be
read as a poet, and a profound and original one. 

     An important book influences even people who have not read
it.  By this criterion, <i>Virgils epische Technik</i> may be the
most important book in twentieth-century Vergilian criticism. 
This new translation will make it more widely read, but in no way
less important.