La descrizione della natura nell’Eneide. Considerazioni teoriche e prove di analisi

Abstract

The description of nature in the Aeneid develops with realistic and definite aspects, conventional and rhetoric themes, metaphorical and symbolic elements, all blended in a complex conception, characterized by an ideological finality. As a proof, here is a study of two specimina: the picture of the river Nile over the shield of Aeneas (VIII, 711-713), ‘fluctuating’ between personification and realistic description; the scene of navigation on the Tiber (ibid. 90-96), where nature on one hand is humanized, on the other is depicted more definitely, by an impressionistic technique, but not without an ideological meaning.