Critics often cite Dryden’s judgement of Vergil’s Georgics (c.29 BCE): he called it the best poem of the best poet. Across four books of hexameter verse Vergil takes agriculture as his subject, in a work which ranges from practical guidance on farming one’s land to the death of Julius Caesar and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The poem will be read in the original Latin, and the course will aim to study it both as a work of literature and in its social, cultural and political context.
Classes will be interactive, and will engage with the poem through close reading of the text, as well as discussion of broader issues and questions. Key features of the Georgics and scholarship on the poem will be considered, including: the practicalities of its farming advice; genre and earlier didactic poetry; Vergil’s teaching techniques and his addressees; engagement with the contemporary political landscape; presentation of country life and rural values; Vergil’s language and style; the poem’s structure; critical perspectives and secondary literature.
Set Edition:
Books 1 and 2: Thomas, R.F. (ed.), Virgil: Georgics, Books I - II, Cambridge 1988
Books 3 and 4: Thomas, R.F. (ed.), Virgil: Georgics, Books III - IV, Cambridge 1988
Texts and Commentaries:
Mynors, R.A.B. (ed.), Virgil, Georgics, Oxford / New York 1990
Williams, R.D. (ed.), Virgil: The Eclogues and Georgics, New York 1979
Introductory on Vergil:
Griffin, J., Virgil, Oxford 1986
Hardie, P.R., Virgil, Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 28, Oxford 1998
Levi, P., Virgil: His Life and Times, London 1998
Slavitt, D.R., Virgil, New Haven and London 1991
Smith, R.A., Virgil, Malden MA, 2011
On didactic poetry:
Dalzell, A., The Criticism of Didactic Poetry, Toronto & London 1996
Volk, K., The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius, Oxford 2002
Toohey, P., Epic lessons: an introduction to didactic poetry, London 1996
On Augustus and the wider historical context:
Galinsky, G.K., Augustan culture; an Interpretative Introduction, Princeton 1996
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, Cambridge 2005
Jones, A.H.M., Augustus, London 1970

Powell, A.R., Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus, London 1992
Shotter, D.C.A., Augustus Caesar, London / New York 2005
White, P., Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome, Cambridge, MA 1993
Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Ann Arbor 1988
Collective Volumes:
Boyle, A.J. (ed.), Virgil's Ascraean song : Ramus essays on the Georgics, Berwick, Victoria 1979
Hardie, P. (ed.) Virgil: Critical Assessments of Classical Authors, London / New York 1999 (vol. 2 on the Georgics)
Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, Cambridge 1997
Spence, S. (ed.), Poets and Critics read Vergil, New Haven & London 2001
Volk, K (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Vergil’s Georgics, Oxford 2008
On the Georgics:
Boyle, A.J., The Chaonian dove : studies in the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid of Virgil, Leiden
1986
Bradley, A., “Augustan Culture and a Radical Alternative: Vergil's "Georgics"”, Arion 8, 1969, 347-
358
Doody, A., “Virgil the Farmer? Critiques of the Georgics in Columella and Pliny”, CP 102, 2007,
180-97
Farrell, J., Vergil's Georgics and the traditions of ancient epic : the art of allusion in literary history,
New York 1991
Gale, M.R., Virgil on the nature of things : the Georgics, Lucretius and the didactic tradition,
Cambridge 1990
Jenkyns, R., Virgil’s experience: nature and history, times, names and places, Oxford /New York
1998
Johnston, P.A., Vergil's agricultural golden age : a study of the Georgics, Leiden 1980
Lee, M.O., Virgil as Orpheus: a study of the Georgics, Albany 1996

Miles, G.B., Virgil's 'Georgics' : a new interpretation, Berkeley & Los Angeles1980
Morgan, L., Patterns of Redemption in Virgil’s Georgics, Cambridge 1999
Nappa, C., Reading after Actium : Vergil's Georgics, Octavian, and Rome, Ann Arbor 2005
Otis, B., Virgil: A study in civilized poetry, Oxford 1964
“A New Study of the Georgics”, Phoenix 26, 1972, 40-62
Perkell, C.G., The Poet's Truth : a study of the poet in Virgil's Georgics, Berkeley 1989
Putnam, M.C.J., Virgil's poem of the earth : studies in the Georgics, Princeton, N.J., 1979
Ross, D.O., Virgil's elements : physics and poetry in the Georgics, Princeton, N.J 1987
Seaton, J., A reading of Vergil’s Georgics, Amsterdam 1983
Smolenaars, J.J.L., “Labour in the Golden Age a Unifying Theme in Vergil's
Poems”, Mnemosyne 40,
1987, 391-405
Spofford, E.W., The social poetry of the Georgics, New York 1981
Spurr. M.S., “Agriculture and the 'Georgics’”, G&R 33, 1986, 164-87
Thibodeau, P., Playing the farmer : representations of rural life in Vergil's Georgics, Berkeley and
London 2011
Thomas, R.F., “Prose into Poetry: Tradition and Meaning in Virgil's Georgics”, HSCP 91, 1987,
229-60
Reading Virgil and his Texts: Studies in Intertextuality, Ann Arbor 1999
Wilkinson, L.P., The Georgics of Virgil: a critical survey, London 1969