BMCR 2009.03.53, Katharina Volk, Vergil's Georgics. Oxford Readings

Katharina Volk (ed.), Vergil's Georgics. Oxford Readings in Classical
Studies.  Oxford/ New York:  Oxford University Press, 2008.  Pp. 281.
ISBN 9780199542949.  $49.95 (pb).

Reviewed by Randall Pogorzelski, University of California, Irvine
([email protected])
Word count:  1563 words
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[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]

Eighteen years after the publication of Stephen Harrison's Oxford
Readings in Vergil's Aeneid, Katharina Volk (hereafter V.) gives us the
"Oxford Readings in Classical Studies" volume on the Georgics.  The
volume was originally intended to be a collection of articles on both
the Georgics and the Eclogues, but the decision was made to split the
project into two volumes, and thus we have V.'s collection of ten
previously published essays on what is currently the least popular poem
of Rome's most popular poet.

The primary aim of the collection, as the statement of the series'
purpose on the inside cover of the volume explains, is to provide "a
representative selection of the best and most influential articles" on
the Georgics.  Readers of this volume will find especially useful V.'s
introduction and the volume's combined bibliography.  The introduction,
the only original piece in the volume, provides a brief but fairly
comprehensive overview of scholarship on the Georgics from 1970 to
2006.  This overview together with the bibliography will be welcome
tools for both students and scholars beginning a project or a course
involving the Georgics.

The articles themselves provide a necessarily less comprehensive,
though more detailed overview of the most debated issues in scholarship
on the poem from 1970 to 1995.  V. has not picked just any ten of the
"best and most influential" articles, but has chosen pieces that work
together as a cohesive collection and arranged them in an order that
flows nicely.  The first four selections (chapters 2-5) treat the poem
as a whole and are arranged chronologically.  The remaining six
selections (chapters 6-11) each focus on a particular passage or
section, and are arranged according to the order in which the passages
occur in the Georgics.

V.'s selections, as is typical of the series, are fairly conservative.
The most recent articles in the collection are from 1995, and each one
has stood the test of time.  A collection focusing on the traditional
core of Georgics scholarship and leaving out samples of the most recent
work and the fringes of the field may offer little that is new and
exciting to those who are already familiar with the most important work
on the poem, but it accomplishes the goal of the series in providing a
reliable guide for those who are not familiar with the important
scholarly debates and positions on the Georgics.

As a whole, the collection focuses on the most important passages and
issues in Georgics scholarship since 1970.  It addresses the
relationship between the Georgics and agriculture (Spurr; Thomas), the
status of the poem as didactic (Thomas; Rutherford), the poem's
intertextual relationship with mythological and didactic sources
(Thomas; Gale; Wilkinson), the meaning of labor improbus (Jenkyns), the
laudes Italiae (Putnam), the proem to the third book (Hardie;
Wilkinson; Thomas), and Aristaeus and Orpheus (Griffin).  V. often
juxtaposes articles in disagreement, giving readers an impression of
lively debate.  On the issue of intertextuality and the poem's use of
sources, for example, the juxtaposition of L. P. Wilkinson's article
arguing for the primary influence of Pindar on the proem to the third
Georgic and Richard Thomas' piece arguing for the primary influence of
Callimachus on the same passage is a nice example of a traditional sort
of debate in Vergilian scholarship.  Similarly, the first two articles
in the collection form a pair debating the issue of whether or not
Vergil's poem was a legitimate farming manual.  In the first selection,
M. S. Spurr takes the position that the poem was intended to teach
Romans how to run a farm, and in the second article Thomas, who has two
articles in the collection, argues against this position, at one point
even using the same evidence as Spurr to draw the opposite conclusion
(Spurr 19; Thomas 61).

Perhaps the most well-known and heated debate in recent Georgics
scholarship is the fundamental "optimism/pessimism" debate.  This issue
is represented in V.'s collection by a balanced set of four close
readings alternating between the two sides of the debate.  In chapter
6, Richard Jenkyns introduces the issue with what he calls a
"progressive" (rather than "optimistic") reading of the phrase labor
improbus in the first Georgic.  The next chapter is Michael Putnam's
reading of the laudes Italiae and other passages from the second
Georgic, arguing that under a surface of praise, there is a "deeper
current of unease" (153).  Putnam is followed by Philip Hardie's
"nationalistic" reading of the end of the second Georgic and beginning
of the third.  We have to wait until the final article in the
collection for the last word in the debate, in the form of Jasper
Griffin's nuanced but ultimately pessimistic (though explicitly not
"anti-Augustan"; 232) reading of the Aristaeus and Orpheus episodes.
V.'s selection of two articles on each side of the issue follows the
series' advice to privilege "no single school or style of approach,"
demonstrating instead the unfolding of the debate and the continuing
lack of consensus.

The "Oxford Readings in Classical Studies" series as a whole has drawn
mixed reviews.[[1]]  Much of the criticism has focused on the
questionable utility of reprinting essays that are readily available in
their original publications.  Although the series claims that "the
collections are particularly valuable for their inclusion of many
important essays which are normally difficult to obtain and for
first-ever translations of some of the pieces," this is difficult to
reconcile with the aim of collecting the "best and most influential
articles."  Especially in the case of an author as important as Vergil,
it is rare that an excellent and influential article remains difficult
to obtain or untranslated into English for long.  In V.'s collection,
none of the essays was originally in a language other than English and
none is particularly hard to find.  Four of the ten articles are
available on JSTOR and the remaining six are available in most
university libraries.

Similarly, the series' statement of purpose suggests that there is
additional value in that, "Many articles are thoroughly revised and
updated by their authors or provided with addenda taking account of
recent work."  In V.'s collection only two footnotes in one article
have been updated with new bibliography.[[2]]  This is not to say that
the reprints do not improve the articles at all.  Three of the
selections feature corrections of minor errors in their original
publications.[[3]]  Translations of Latin, Greek, and German quotations
have also been added to the articles that originally lacked them.

I would have preferred that the translations be added more
consistently.  Sometimes short Latin (and sometimes Greek or German)
phrases lack translations, and often when a particular passage is
quoted more than once in the same article, a translation is provided
only for the first quotation.  More significant is the misleading note
that Putnam's article has been reprinted "with...the addition of
translations of the Latin passages by the author."  It should be noted
that with two exceptions the translations of passages from the Georgics
in this essay are not done by Putnam, but are from Fairclough's Loeb,
as should be obvious to a reader who knows Putnam's usual translations
to be somewhat more current and precise than, for example, "[you]
who...now drivest the craven Indian from our hills of Rome" (2.171-2,
quoted on p.143).  Fairclough's translations are also included (though
not attributed) at the end of the original publication of Putnam's
essay, although the translation of 2.541-2 was altered.

While the utility of a series that reprints often readily available
articles may be questioned, especially in a time of limited resources
for academic publishing, this collection successfully accomplishes the
goal of the series.  Certainly V.'s introduction and the volume's
bibliography will be useful introductions to scholarship on the
Georgics.  The selected articles themselves cover in detail the most
important issues and passages in Georgics scholarship of the late
twentieth century.  Focusing on the goal of selecting very good and
influential pieces that work well together rather than selecting
hard-to-find articles, V. has produced a collection that accurately
represents the influential debates about the Georgics from the last 38
years.

CORRIGENDA

V.'s introduction (p.3 n.3) gives a URL for Niklas Holzberg's
bibliography on the Georgics, but the site is no longer accessible.

On p.35 n.54, read "figure" for "figures" (this error is also in the
original publication of Spurr's article).

On p.100 n.13 read "naturai" for "naturae" in the quotation of De Rerum
Natura 1.586 (this error is not in the original publication of Gale's
article).

On p.152 the second 'e' in "tempe" should be italicized (this error is
not in the original publication of Putnam's article).

CONTENTS

Scholarly Approaches to the Georgics Since the 1970s / Katharina Volk
-- Agriculture and the Georgics / M. S. Spurr -- Prose into Poetry:
Tradition and Meaning in Virgil's Georgics / Richard F. Thomas --
Authorial Rhetoric in Virgil's Georgics / Richard Rutherford --
Virgil's Metamorphoses: Myth and Allusion in the Georgics / Monica R.
Gale -- Labor Improbus / Richard Jenkyns -- Italian Virgil and the Idea
of Rome / Michael C. J. Putnam -- Cosmology and National Epic in the
Georgics (Georgics 2.458-3.48) / Philip Hardie -- Pindar and the Proem
to the Third Georgic / L. P. Wilkinson -- Callimachus, the Victoria
Berenices, and Roman Poetry / Richard F. Thomas -- The Fourth Georgic,
Virgil and Rome / Jasper Griffin.


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Notes:


1.   For positive remarks on the series in other reviews, see
especially Kraus (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004-10-24.html)
and Volk (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2008/2008-05-39.html) .  For
more critical comments on the series see especially Farrell
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1991/02.02.11.html) , but also Lacki
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2007/2007-09-19.html) , Olson
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.03.06.html) , and Kruschwitz
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2002/2002-12-30.html) .

2.   Notes 2 and 5 in Gale's "Myth and Allusion in the Georgics" have
been updated with new bibliography.

3.   Errors corrected in the reprint of Rutherford's article are: On
p.85 (23 in the original) the emphasis on "vidimus" has been removed.
On p.87 (24 in the original) a reference to Georgics 1.294 has been
corrected to 3.294.

Errors corrected in the reprint of Gale's article are: On p.108 (43 in
the original) "labor" is now italicized.  On p.111 (45 in the original)
"working-out" has been corrected to "working out."  On p. 112 (45 in
the original) "weapons" in the translation of Georgics 1.332 has been
corrected to "weapon."  On p. 114 (47 in the original) "Early man is
durus" has been changed to "Early man is tough."  On p.117 (48 in the
original) the ellipsis has been removed from "Cyclopum ... agros" in
the quotation of Georgics 1.471.  In n.11 the ellipsis has been removed
from "ferreus ... decrescit" in the quotation of De Rerum Natura 1.314.
In n.17 "maris sudor" has been corrected to "sudor ... maris" in the
quotation of De Rerum Natura 2.465.  In n.46 the reference to
Georgics1.378 has been corrected to 1.318.  In n.68 "E.g." has been
corrected to "e.g."  In n.89 "Virgil may have had...in mind" is changed
to "Virgil might have...in mind."

Errors corrected in the reprint of Putnam's article are: On p.138 (171
in the original) "conservation" is corrected to "conservative."  On
p.141 (173 in the original) "Tyrrhenian seas" is corrected to "Adriatic
and Tyrrhenian seas."  On p.151 (181 in the original) "Utopia" is now
capitalized.  In n.3 a reference to Georgics 1.153 has been corrected
to 2.153.