Literature Stream Seminars: Don McCarthy (University of Toronto)

Don McCarthy from the University of Toronto will be giving a seminar titled: The Birds and the Bees: Vergil’s Georgics and Aristotle’s Historia Animalium

Literature Seminars are not open to the public.

This paper will argue that Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, while seldom examined at length in Vergilian scholarship, had an outsize influence on the composition of the Georgics, particularly in Books 1 and 4 of the poem. There is a pattern of literary allusion to the HA in the Georgics which becomes apparent upon examination of several of the poet’s most striking zoological portraits, ranging in subject from swallows and bees to lizards and moles. The poet highlights these moments for the reader through a complex web of irregular vocabulary and syntax all pointing towards Aristotle. While not denying Vergil’s evident interests in Epicureanism, it is hoped that this study will invite further investigation into the importance of the Peripatetics for Vergil’s poetry.