Constructing Communities in Vergil's Aeneid: Cultural Memory, Identity, and Ideology

Constructing Communities in Vergil's Aeneid explores memory, ethnic identity, and politics within the fictional world, drawing connections between characters, settings, and narrative and the political context of the early Roman Empire. It examines how the Aeneid's fictive ethnic communities have their own identities, myths, and cultural memories and engage in politics of the past, reflecting contemporary political and cultural discourse.

Format: Hardback
Length: 242 pages
Publication date: 03 January 2024
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Constructing Communities in Vergil's Aeneid: Cultural Memory, Identity, and Ideology offers a fresh perspective on memory, ethnic identity, and politics within the fictional realm of this Roman epic, uncovering previously unexplored connections between Vergils characters, settings, and narrative and the political context of the early Roman Empire. This book delves into the identities, myths, and cultural memories of the fictive ethnic communities featured in the Aeneid—the Trojans, Carthaginians, Latins, and Arcadians—revealing how they engage in the politics of the past, similar to their real-life Roman counterparts. Previous studies of identity and memory in the Aeneid have primarily focused on the poems construction of Roman identity, but Constructing Communities shifts the focus to the characters themselves, highlighting how the world within the poem mirrors contemporary political and cultural discourse, reflecting an historical milieu where appeals to Roman identity were vigorously asserted in political rhetoric. The book employs this evidence to conduct a comprehensive literary analysis of the Aeneid, as well as a reassessment of its engagement with Roman imperial ideology during the Age of Augustus.

Weight: 552g
Dimension: 160 x 239 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472133499