Virgil's Cinematic Art
Vision as Narrative in the Aeneid
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:23rd Feb '23
Should be back in stock very soon
Virgil's Cinematic Art concerns the rhetoric of visual manipulation that provokes us to envision what is written on the page, treating visual details in ancient epic not as mere scene-setting information or enhancements to any given story, but as cues for performing specific imaginative processes. Through a series of close readings centered primarily on Virgil's Aeneid, Kirk Freudenburg shows that the experiential effects that Virgil puts into play do serious narrative work of their own by structuring lines of sight, both visual and emotive, and shifting them about in ways that move readers (interpellated as viewers) into and out of the visual and emotional worlds of the story's characters. Studies of visualization in Latin poetry have tended to treat what is seen in epic as a matter of what is there to be seen, rather than an expression of how someone sees, treating images as mostly static. This study, by contrast, concerns the cinematics of ancient narrative: how words provoke an active, forward-moving process of experiential participation; poets not as verbal painters, but as projectors, purveyors of imagined happenings. Informed by cognitivist and constructivist studies of how audiences watch narrative films and make sense of what they are being given to see, Freudenburg locates new narrative content lurking in old places, brought to life within the imaginations of readers. The end result is a new approach to the question of how ancient epic tales convey narrative content through visual means.
Like the best films, [Virgil's Cinematic Art] is well paced, beautifully shot and scripted, action-packed and leaves you wanting more.... This short book punches well above its weight and is written with infectious panache and exciting appreciation of the visual and verbal magic on show in this poem. It deserves an Oscar. * Classics for All *
This scintillating study offers new close readings of Vergil's Aeneid by paying close attention to acts of seeing in the epic. Freudenburg handles complex ideas in an attractive, accessible style, combining more traditional forms of literary analysis with insights gained from narratology, cognitive science, and cinema studies. He has written a strikingly original book that should help every student of the Aeneid to look harder and become a better reader * Damien Nelis, University of Geneva *
Virgilian scholarship has two traditional foci: the power of images created by the text (ecphrasis) and the subjective, emotional style of the narrative. In this brilliant book, Kirk Freudenburg has found a way to embrace them both. Epic and cinema, he argues, must enter a deeper dialogue: long before film, epic is a lab for visual effects and viewer participation * Alessandro Barchiesi, New York University *
Freudenburg aims to address both non-specialists and scholars of Vergil -- not an easy task in which he, to my mind, fully succeeds. As he shows, cinematographic technique provides a very fruitful lens through which to explore the Aeneid and Vergil's narrative art. * Anke Walter, Greece & Rome *
ISBN: 9780197643242
Dimensions: 162mm x 242mm x 19mm
Weight: 440g
200 pages