Latin 116. Virgil: Eclogues and Georgics (4 units)
David Driscoll
Course Description: While best known for his epic of Rome, the Aeneid, Virgil made his name with earlier poetry: the pastoral Eclogues and the Georgics, a didactic poem about farming. This course will read key selections from both these works in Latin and the whole of the works in English translation. It will consider these poems’ engagement with the social and political upheaval of the late Republic and their intertextuality with earlier Greek and Latin poetry. Particular attention will be paid, however, to space, landscape, and ecology in these poems, including comparison of the poems' fictionalized Mediterranean worlds to the hot-summer Mediterranean climate of the contemporary Central Valley around us.
Prerequisite: Latin 100 or consent of instructor (dfdriscoll@ucdavis.edu).
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and Writing Experience.
Format: Lecture -3 hours; Term Paper.