God and the Land : The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil: The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and VergilOxford University Press, USA, 1998 M05 18 - 272 pages In this pathbreaking book, which includes a powerful new translation of Hesiod's Works and Days by esteemed translator David Grene, Stephanie Nelson argues that a society's vision of farming contains deep indications about its view of the human place within nature, and our relationship to the divine. She contends that both Hesiod in the Works and Days and Vergil in the Georgics saw farming in this way, and so wrote their poems not only about farming itself, but also about its deeper ethical and religious implications. Hesiod, Nelson argues, saw farming as revealing that man must live by the sweat of his brow, and that good, for human beings, must always be accompanied by hardship. Within this vision justice, competition, cooperation, and the need for labor take their place alongside the uncertainties of the seasons and even of particular lucky and unlucky days to form a meaningful whole within which human life is an integral part. Vergil, Nelson argues, deliberately modeled his poem upon the Works and Days, and did so in order to reveal that his is a very different vision. Hesiod saw the hardship in farming; Vergil sees its violence as well. Farming is for him both our life within nature, and also our battle against her. Against the background of Hesiods poem, which found a single meaning for human life, Vergil thus creates a split vision and suggests that human beings may be radically alienated from both nature and the divine. Nelson argues that both the Georgics and the Works and Days have been misread because scholars have not seen the importance of the connection between the two poems, and because they have not seen that farming is the true concern of both, farming in its deepest and most profoundly unsettling sense. |
Contents
Geneaological Table | 2 |
Hesiods Works and Days | 5 |
HESIODS WORKS AND DAYS | 9 |
HESIOD POET AND FARMER | 31 |
1 THE COMPOSITION OF HESIODS POEMS | 41 |
2 THE MYTHIC BACKGROUND | 59 |
VERGILS FARM | 82 |
4 GOD | 98 |
5 THE HUMAN CONTEXT | 125 |
6 THE PLACE OF NATURE | 152 |
Notes | 171 |
231 | |
247 | |
Common terms and phrases
Adkins Aeneid Aeschylus animals Aristaeus bees Boeotia Classical Composition contrast cosmos Cronos crops Days Demeter describes didactic difficulty Dike divine due season earth Epimetheus evil fable fact farmer father fields final finally find fire first Five Ages force Georgics gives goddesses gods Golden Age Greece Greek Grene harvest hawk Herodotus Heroes Hesiod Hesiod’s description Hesiod’s sense Homer honor human Iliad injustice iod’s Iron Age justice kings labor lines live man’s Mazon Moirai moral Muses myth nature nightingale one’s order of Zeus Orpheus Ouranos oxen Oxford Pandora particular peasant Perkell Perses plow poem poem’s poet poetry profit Prometheus punishment race Religion Roman sacrifice sailing scholars second Georgie significance simply society Solmsen sowing spring Strife theme theodicy Theogony Thespiae tion Tradition Typhoeus understanding unity University Press Verdenius Vergil Vernant vines violence vision Walcot West West’s words Zeus