Vergilius is dood, lang leve zijn Appendix!

Abstract

The Appendix Vergiliana is a heterogeneous collection of pseudo-Vergilian poems, consisting in part of primary pseudepigrapha, i.e. poems that self-consciously create the illusion of Vergilian authorship (especially Culex and Catalepton). For centuries, scholarship on these poems has been dominated by the question of authenticity. In the wake of New Criticism, Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) and Foucault’s ‘What is an Author?’ (1969), however, classical scholars have grown to understand and appreciate how these poems – regardless of who actually wrote them – produce their ‘Vergil’, supplementing the master poet’s oeuvre, inserting themselves in his poetic biography, and casting him in the role of Homerus Romanus.