BMCR 2009.03.40, Katharina Volk, Vergil's Eclogues. Oxford Readings

Katharina Volk (ed.), Vergil's Eclogues. Oxford Readings in Classical
Studies.  Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press, 2008.  Pp. 293.
ISBN 9780199202935.  $130.00/L65.00.  ISBN 9780199202942.
$49.95/L25.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Timothy Saunders, University of Tromsoe
([email protected])
Word count:  3059 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

This book represents a further addition to the long-running and
ever-expanding Oxford Readings in Classical Studies series. In
particular, its publication alongside that of the same editor's volume
on the Georgics means that, 18 years after the appearance of Stephen
Harrison's Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid, the Virgil section is
now complete (assuming, that is, that a similar tome on the Appendix
will have to await the dawning of an entirely new world order). As we
are told on the back cover, this book 'collects ten classic papers on
the Eclogues, written between 1975 and 1999 by leading scholars from
the UK, the USA, Germany, and Italy' and it aims to 'be helpful to
students who are encountering the poems for the first time, while also
serving as a reference work for more seasoned scholars'. The selection
of articles that Katharina Volk (hereafter V.) has made for this
purpose certainly does have its merits, although for reasons that will
become clear, I would imagine that those for whom this volume will
genuinely be useful will be both fewer in number and, on occasion,
slightly different in kind from the amorphous group of 'seasoned
scholars' and, especially, from the first-time students for whom it is
ostensibly intended.

We could no doubt argue until the cows come home about which ten
articles really do represent -- to quote the series remit -- 'the best
and most influential' work on the Eclogues since 1970 (pre-supposing,
of course, that we could first get those two categories of 'best' and
'most influential' to match). At the very least, of the ten papers V.
offers us here all are certainly worthwhile; most could probably be
regarded as important; and two or three do indeed deserve the title of
a 'classic'. By and large, moreover, these papers complement one
another fairly well and give a reasonably good sense of the variety of
questions and approaches that have been brought to these poems by
classicists (and this is a qualification to which I shall return) since
the 1970s. On top of this, V. does an able job in her introduction of
explaining her selection and describing the shape and progression of
the book. In so doing, she also makes a valiant attempt at binding
together what was nonetheless always going to remain a slightly
disparate group.  Rather than question the inclusion of individual
articles and suggest alternatives, then, I shall instead confine myself
to illustrating the view of the Eclogues and their recent scholarship
that emerges from this particular selection of articles, and will seek
to highlight some of its strengths and weaknesses.

The book begins with an introduction that, as I have just mentioned,
explains the structure and purpose of the volume in more detail and
offers a useful survey of scholarship on the Eclogues since the 1970s.
V. admits (p.2) that this starting date for the articles collected in
this volume is 'somewhat arbitrary', but proceeds to justify it on the
grounds that a) this ensures that the papers included 'may still be
considered vaguely contemporary'; and b) the 1970s 'saw a number of
important new impulses in the study of the Eclogues, ones that have
continued to influence scholarship'. Be that as it may, for some
readers it is precisely V's survey of studies of the Eclogues from the
last four decades that will prove to be the most valuable part of the
book, ranging as it does over a whole host of publications that, for
obvious reasons, could not be reprinted here. In addition, V. also
helpfully identifies some key themes and patterns that recur in the
scholarship of this period. Beginning with the observation that all
three of Virgil's works have often been felt to be polysemous in nature
and capable of sustaining a wide variety of interpretations, she
nonetheless proceeds to argue that it is possible to discern two
principal strands in the interpretation of Virgil's work in general and
of the Eclogues in particular. These strands she calls the
'ideological' and the 'literary' (pp.4-6). Even though these two
strands have 'not infrequently' intertwined in the past and still
intertwine today, V. continues, there has on the whole been an
increasing tendency to focus on the 'literary' quality of these poems
rather than the 'ideological'. Present-day studies of the Eclogues, she
writes, 'are thus less likely to ask "What do these poems tell us about
life?" than "What do these poems tell us about poetry?"' (p.6).

For the most part, the papers collected here would seem to support this
analysis, although the contributions by Christine Perkell ('On Eclogue
1.79-83) and, especially, Seamus Heaney ('Eclogues in extremis: On the
Staying Power of Pastoral') both indicate that the desire to read these
poems for what they have to say about such things as 'human life and
the human condition' (themes which V. includes as subjects of
'ideological' approaches, p.4) is still alive and well. Indeed, one of
the many reasons why scholarly interest in these issues has persisted
-- and Heaney explicitly acknowledges this -- is because of such
influential studies as Paul Alpers' books The Singer of the Eclogues
(1979) and What Is Pastoral? (1996), both of which sit comfortably
within the temporal limits of V.'s survey. A different selection of
articles from this period, one therefore suspects, could just as
readily have suggested a different set of emphases. What is more, I
would not be at all surprised to find that this impression of a shift
from 'ideological' to 'literary' concerns is at least in part a
reflection of the volume's primary focus on studies of the Eclogues
that have been produced by classicists and that concentrate upon
reading these poems in what might loosely be described as 'their own
terms' or within their original and immediate context. Heaney's paper,
for instance, is the obvious exception and it is notable that this
straddles both of V.'s categories. Ernst Schmidt's, meanwhile, looks
ahead to Sannazaro's Arcadia mainly in an attempt 'to lift some of the
layers that have come to cover the bucolic poetry of Vergil' (p.17).
Were we also to take our soundings from works that discuss the Eclogues
in far broader contexts than this, I would hazard that the resulting
picture would similarly be far more mixed. One need only cite Annabel
Patterson's hugely influential book Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to
Vale/ry from 1987 (the title of which speaks for itself) as preliminary
evidence for this.[[1]]

To observe that this volume tends to concentrate on studies that have
issued directly out of classics departments is not necessarily a
criticism in itself (and any potential detractors on this score would
certainly be obliged to give some credit for the inclusion of a piece
by one of the most celebrated poets of our time). Nonetheless, it
should also be acknowledged that this concentration does affect the
resulting characterisation of the Eclogues. As I have just mentioned,
most of the papers reprinted here treat the Eclogues (as it were) 'in
themselves', 'on their own terms' or 'in their immediate context'. This
may all be well and good, but it rather limits the book's own
self-professed intention of representing a variety of approaches to
these poems (p.12). Quite apart from anything else, studies of the
Eclogues that seek to relate them to other -- and especially later --
historical, political, religious and cultural contexts are likely to
ask different questions and to bring into play different kinds of
reading practices from those that focus on their immediate milieu.
Thus, while V. can fairly be said to have achieved her goals of
including 'scholars from different countries, with different styles and
different critical convictions, whose views on the texts they treat
vary considerably' (p.12), the collection as a whole does nonetheless
continue to feel rather safe: even the most unorthodox and unusual
voice represented here, John Henderson's, is likely to sound somewhat
familiar to any but the most first-time of first-time students. It
would be challenging indeed to put together a collection of essays that
are classic, important and influential on the one hand, yet surprising
and new to many of its readers on the other.

In addition to expressing her desire to represent a variety of critical
approaches to these poems, V. also states that her aim has been 'to
cover major topics of contemporary research on the Eclogues while also
highlighting particularly prominent poems' (p.12). Given the
constraints of focus mentioned above, V. has done a remarkably good job
of meeting her goals. Readers of this review will be able to see from
the list of contents reprinted at the end of this piece the kinds of
topics represented in this volume. Those which appear either as the
central concern of any given article or as one of their more prominent
secondary themes include: the role of Arcadia, the Eclogues' poetic
style and programme (including their structure), their relationship
towards and engagement with previous literary traditions, and the
question of whether they are bucolic or pastoral. By opening with Ernst
Schmidt's account of how the later pastoral tradition has influenced
the way in which we continue to (mis)read certain aspects of these
poems today and by closing with Seamus Heaney's discussion of a number
of recent poems that might be thought to continue Virgil's pastoral
legacy, this volume also gestures subtly towards the increasing
importance of reception studies in contemporary interpretations of the
Eclogues.

As far as the commitment to highlight 'particularly prominent poems'
goes, even though the result might initially appear somewhat arbitrary
and partial (the inclusion of a whole article on just a few lines from
Eclogue 1, for instance, or the omission of a piece on Eclogue 9 could
rise a few eyebrows), in practice the coverage is fairly good: every
poem receives a mention somewhere or other, while those articles that
concentrate on just one poem tend to refer to, and reach conclusions
that are relevant for, several -- and often all -- of the others. What
is more, in her introduction V. runs through each poem in turn and
offers a helpful summary of the issues they have raised, along with a
brief bibliography for further study.

For the most part, then, V. can be commended for having successfully
achieved her own remit: these essays do represent a variety of
approaches; they do cover many of the major topics discussed in the
past 35 years or so; and they do offer a good selection of close
readings of individual poems. The question remains, however, of how
useful a volume of this kind will actually prove to be and -- a related
issue -- whom it is actually for.

As I indicated at the outset, I suspect that those for whom such a book
will genuinely be helpful will be both fewer in number and slightly
different in kind from the 'seasoned scholars' and 'students ...
encountering the poems for the first time' identified on the back
cover. To start with the first of these groups, I imagine that most of
those who are here being conjured up in the guise of 'seasoned
scholars' will already have access to most of the articles reprinted in
this volume. (In this, it would seem, V.'s collection follows most of
its stable-mates in largely ignoring the goal of the series to publish
'important essays which are normally difficult to obtain'.[[2]] Part of
the problem, I suppose, is that essays that are deemed important rarely
remain difficult to obtain, even if they were so in the first place:
more than half of the papers collected here, for instance, have already
been reprinted elsewhere. Having said that, not every scholar of the
Eclogues, seasoned or otherwise, will necessarily have access to a
sufficiently well-stocked (or well-subscribing) research library, and
there will doubtless be many who will gladly make room for a copy of
the paperback version at least on their own shelves. To this extent
alone, such a volume could reasonably be deemed 'helpful' to the
scholarly community (albeit in far fewer numbers than its back cover
implies), and a further point in its favour is the opportunity it
provides to take a moment's reflection and consider what has been
underplayed or even omitted entirely from studies of the Eclogues from
1970 and after.

In my view, though, the true contribution this book has to make to
contemporary Anglophone scholarship lies in its inclusion of two
articles that are published here in English for the first time: Ernst
Schmidt's 'Arcadia: modern occident and classical antiquity' from 1975,
which offers an alternative -- and earlier -- account of how
Sannazaro's Arcadia has impacted latter day understandings of Virgil's
Arcadia than Richard Jenkyns' commonly cited article 'Virgil and
Arcadia' from 1989;[[3]] and Lorenz Rumpf's 'Bucolic nomina in Virgil
and Theocritus: on the poetic technique of Virgil's Eclogues'. (The
translation of Conte's 'An Interpretation of the Tenth Eclogue' has
been available for many years now and has clearly been widely read.)
This leads me to think that what might ultimately benefit our
increasingly monolingual English-language community the most are
collections of essays of this kind that consist solely of translations
of articles from other languages: and not just from the great German
and Italian traditions represented here, but from those of France,
Russia, Spain and, of course, Scandinavia as well (to mention but a
few).

So much (for the time being) for the seasoned scholars. How helpful
will this book be for 'students who are encountering the poems for the
first time'? This depends on what is meant by 'for the first time'. If
the question is, quite literally, where should one go first to begin
one's study of these poems, then the answer, I suggest, would lie
rather in the numerous surveys of Virgil that exist with separate
chapters on the Eclogues, in the various Companions to Virgil, and in
some (but by no means all) of the scholarly monographs that encompass
all ten of these poems in their scope. Individual papers from V.'s
selection might indeed be recommended at an early stage, but -- unless
those papers really are not already available in their original venue
at that student's university or college -- this in itself does not
serve to enshrine the volume as a whole as a first port-of-call.

This is not to say that this volume will not have its uses for
students, simply that those students would be well-advised to have read
some of this other secondary literature first. Indeed, this volume
clearly has been designed with students and others who have not yet
achieved the status of 'seasoned scholar' in mind: all foreign
languages, including Greek and Latin are translated, even when this was
not the case in the original version; there is a useful index of
passages cited and a bibliography; and the articles are, as a rule,
quite simple to read. (Some may find Henderson's style somewhat
challenging, but on the other hand it's a lot of fun.) I would,
however, question the wisdom of putting the two chapters on style so
early on: they are both worth reading, but since they are quite
technical, they could seem a bit off-putting for first-timers, leading
them to conclude that the rest of the volume is likewise beyond their
current competence.

There are, nonetheless, a number of respects in which the volume could
have been rendered even more user-friendly than it is, for scholars and
students alike. For a start, while there is an index of passages cited,
there is no general index. Likewise, all the papers included here have
been reformatted in the series style and repaginated to reflect their
position in this volume. Those of us who like to give the impression we
read the articles the first time around would have appreciated having
the original page numbers retained in parentheses in the margins. More
seriously, this makes it more difficult for owners of the various
versions of these papers to find each others' cross-references. Perhaps
more than anything else, though, the value of this volume would have
been greatly enhanced had each article been accompanied by a short
guide to further reading, indicating how the debate has progressed
since the specific intervention reprinted here (this is the practice of
Richard Buxton's volume Greek Religion and Andrew Laird's Ancient
Literary Criticism, for instance, so it is not without precedent in
this series).[[4]] Finally, if this volume really is intended for
students -- and if this explains the presence of a paperback as well as
a hardback edition -- then the cover price is not quite as 'helpful' as
one might have wished.

Still, this is a handsome and well-produced volume. Each article has
been reset in OUP's pleasing house style; revisions have for the most
part been relatively minor; and the typos that either remain or have
been introduced are few and unimportant.[[5]]

To conclude, then, would I recommend this book? Assuming a) that you or
your library do not have ready access to the articles here reprinted;
b) that you are not looking for an introductory guide to these poems;
and c) that what you are in search of is a collection of solid,
clearly-argued and reasonably varied essays on several of the topics
that have attracted classicists' attention in recent years, then I
would have no hesitation in saying yes. If one or two of these criteria
do not apply, however, you might wish to think more carefully about
whether what remains is enough to justify the raid on the piggy bank.

1.  Introduction: scholarly approaches to the Eclogues since 1970,
Katharina Volk
2. Arcadia: modern occident and classical antiquity, Ernst A. Schmidt
3. The style of Virgil's Eclogues, R. G. M. Nisbet
4. Bucolic nomina in Virgil and Theocritus: on the poetic technique of
Virgil's Eclogues, Lorenz Rumpf
5. Allusive artistry and Vergil's revisionary program: Eclogues 1-3,
Thomas K. Hubbard
6. On Eclogue 1.79-83, Christine G. Perkell
7. Virgil's third Eclogue: how do you keep an idiot in suspense? John
Henderson
8. Virgil's fourth Eclogue: Easterners and Westerners, R. G. M. Nisbet
9. The sixth Eclogue: Virgil's poetic genealogy, David O. Ross, Jr
10. An interpretation of the tenth Eclogue, Gian Biagio Conte
11. Eclogues in extremis: on the staying power of pastoral, Seamus
Heaney
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Notes:


1.   This book does receive a passing mention on p.12 of the
introduction as an example of a study of how the Eclogues relate to the
later pastoral tradition, but not it does not feature in V.'s
discussion of ideological approaches to these poems.

2.   Reading some of the reviews of other volumes in the Oxford
Readings in Classical Studies series, I could not help but be reminded
of the following sigh against the record industry emitted by The
Smiths: 'Best of! Most of! / Satiate the need / Slip them into
different sleeves! / Buy both, and feel deceived'. See, for instance,
Joseph Farrell's comments on the Aeneid volume, BMCR 02.02.11
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1991/02.02.11.html)  and Glenn Lacki's
on the one dedicated to Ovid BMCR 2007.09.19.

3.   R. Jenkyns (1989) 'Virgil and Arcadia', JRS 79: 26-39.

4.   I mentioned earlier that V. does provide a guide for further
reading for each eclogue in her introduction, but this covers a range
of themes and does not tend to indicate where we might go to follow the
future development of the specific debates raised by the articles she
actually reprints.

5.   Examples I spotted include: on pp.44-5, the footnotes shift
unexpectedly to the centre; on p.56 (Nisbet) the 'et' preceding Veneris
dominae should also be in italics; on p.66 (Rumpf) 'epithets' should
presumably replace 'epitheta'; on p.250 (Heaney) we find 'thequestion';
while in the bibliography the editor's own monograph is seemingly in
the process of being translated: Die Poetics of Latin Didactic.