Literary Tales Ep. 6: Virgil’s Aeneid | Discourses on Minerva

In our next episode of Literary Tales we focus on the grand Latin epic that T.S. Eliot called “our classic.” Virgil’s Aeneid is a grand construction of history and memory more-so than mythos and pathos. The imagery Virgil uses to drive the story forward is the principal focus in this lecture; we discuss how Virgil uses history and historical memory in Aeneas’ encounters with Dido of Carthage and the war against the Latins and King Turnus.

This lecture is based on my essay, “The Shield of Aeneas: Memory and History in Virgil’s Aeneid” (1 October 2019).