A Structural analysis and visual abstraction of the pictorial in the Aeneid, I-VI
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Authors
Shaw, Rayford Wesley
Issue Date
2000-06
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Aeneid cycles , Apollonio (di Giovanni) , Cameos and snapshots , Cinematic progression , Claude (Lorrain) , Cyclops , Fama , Flight from Troy , History painters , Laocoon , Perino (del Vaga) , Poussin (Nicolas) , Symbolic imagery , Turner (JMW) , Vergilian landscape , Vrancx (Sebastiaen) , Wooden horse
Alternative Title
Abstract
The pictorial elements of the first six books of the
Aeneid can be evidenced through an examination of its
structural components. With commentaries on such
literary devices as parallels and antipodes, interwoven
themes, cyclic patterns, and strategic placement of words
in the text, three genres of painting are treated
individually in Chapter 1 to illustrate the poet's
consistency of design and to prove him a craftsman of the
visual arts.
In the first division, "Cinematic progression," attention
is directed to the language which conveys movement and
frequentative action, with special emphasis placed on
specific passages whose verbal components possess
sculptural or third-dimensional traits and contribute to
the "spiral" and "circle" motifs, the appropriate visual
agents for animation.
Depiction of mythological subjects comprises the second
division entitled "Cameos and snapshots." Three
selections, dubbed monstra, are explicated with such
cross references as to illustrate the poet's use of
epithets which he distributes passim to elicit verbal
echoes of other passages.
The final division, "The Vergilian landscape," addresses
two major themes, antithetical in nature, the martial and
the pastoral. Their sequential juxtaposition in the text
renders a marked contrast in mood which is manifested
pictorially in the transition from darkness to light. A
panoramic chiaroscuro emerges which is the tapestry
against which Aeneas makes his sojourn through the
Underworld. It is the perfect backdrop to accompany the
overriding theme of "things hidden," res latentes, which
encompasses a greater part of the epic and becomes the
culminant motif of the paintings which comprise the
visual presentation.
Chapter 2 functions as a catalogue raisonne for art
inspired by the Aeneid from early antiquity up to the
present day. Such examples of artistic expression
provide a continuum with which to appropriate Horace's
maxim, ut pictura poesis, in their evaluation.
The verbal exegeses in Chapter 1 have been programmed to
comport with the thematic content of the visual
presentation in Chapter 3, a critique exemplifying the
transposition of the verbal to the pictorial. With these
canvases I have attempted to render a new perspective of
Vergil's epic in the genre of abstract expressionism.
Description
Citation
Shaw, Rayford Wesley (2000) A Structural analysis and visual abstraction of the pictorial in the Aeneid, I-VI, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16021>