Columella’s Prose Preface: A Paratextual Reading of De Re Rustica Book 10

Abstract

This paper examines the prose preface to Columella’s De re rustica Book 10 as a ‘paratext’ to the verse book proper, and questions the impact of this framing strategy on our perception of the garden-as-text within the realm of agronomic literature. This analysis reveals two distinct, but interrelated, ways in which Columella frames Book 10: first, as a direct and important response to Virgil’s gardening excursus in the Georgics (4.116–48); and, second, as a small part-payment towards the completion of his own agricultural treatise. In order to explain this literary paradox, I propose Derrida’s concept of the supplement as a means of articulating the place of the hortus in the tension between Columella, his sources, and his attempt to create a new definitive agricultural treatise.