Our last class on Virgil -- how he reimagines Homer. The wrath of Turnus compared to that of Achilles. Aeneas is as merciless as Achilles will become (though we didn't really discuss this). The tension between public and private virtue in Virgil, Dante, and Milton: no such tension in Homer (no difference between them, or almost none) and as for Ovid, the private is what matters. (Plato a harder case.) Love in VIrgil, and other Platonic subjects. Gates of ivory and horn: Penelope's dream and Aeneas's compared to Adam's and Milton's. Exposition of Milton's Sonnet 23. Dr. Johnson's strictures on Virgil's imitation of Homer in the Rambler, and his preference for Ajax's silence to Dido's.
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