Farrell, Joseph
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Publication Precincts of Venus: Towards a Prehistory of Ovidian Genre(2005-01-01) Farrell, JosephPublication The Six Books of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura: Antecedents and Influence(2010-01-01) Farrell, JosephLucretius’ De rerum natura is one of the relatively few corpora of Greek and Roman literature that is structured in six books. It is distinguished as well by features that encourage readers to understand it both as a sequence of two groups of three books (1+2+3, 4+5+6) and also as three successive pairs of books (1+2, 3+4, 5+6). This paper argues that the former organizations scheme derives from the structure of Ennius’ Annales and the latter from Callimachus’ book of Hynms. It further argues that this Lucretius’ union of these two six-element schemes influenced the structure employed by Ovid in the Fasti. An appendix endorses Zetzel’s idea that the six-book structure of Cicero’s De re publica marks that work as well as a response to Lucretius’ poem.Publication Goethe's Elegiac Sabbatical(2010-01-01) Farrell, JosephAny effort to interpret Goethe's career according to a single, pre-existing pattern would obviously be misconceived. Not only was his literary career a vast, sprawling thing in itself, but it was thoroughly intertwined with several others, including those of courrier, politician, diplomat, scientist and artist, Moreover, several of these callings interacted quite directly with his work as a writer. Even if we focus on Goethe's literary career in the narrowest possible sense, we cannot really speak in any simple way either of continuous Virgilian ascent through ever more elevated genres, or of Horatian retirement to an aesthetic angulus, or of any other model derived from the careers of Classical poets as the dominant lens through which to view Goethe's experience. And let us admit this at once: the evidence that Goethe himself modelled his own career upon any of these patterns is non-existent. In this respect he differs from Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, Milton and other poets who explicitly represent themselves as fashioning their careers after Virgilian, Horatian and Lucanian proto-types. All of this might seem to make Goethe an unpromising subject in the context of career studies.Publication Servius and the Homeric Scholia(2008-01-01) Farrell, JosephWhen we speak of Servius' commentary on the works of Vergil, we understand that the name of Servius, which we use mainly for convenience, cloaks in apparent unity a work that is notable for its diversity and heterogeneity. This remark pertains not only to the existence of two Servian commentaries, the one written by Servius himself in the fifth century and the one compiled several centuries afterwards and eventually published by Pierre Daniel, but also to the diverse prior sources on which both these commentaries are based. It is well known that much of the material in these commentaries is tralatician. Except in a few specific cases, however, we cannot name either the proximate or the ultimate source of any given contribution, nor can we claim to understand fully the general principles that Servius followed in compiling his work. In this paper I will review some of those cases in which we can say with certainty or with reasonable probability how some specific passages in Servius took their current form, and will attempt to clarify what these instances can tell us about Servius' working methods in general. In order to keep this essay within manageable limits, I will confine my examination to passages in which the Servian commentaries show a strong affinity with the exegetical tradition of Homer.Publication Publication Milanion, Acontius and Gallus: Vergil, Eclogue 10.52-61(1986) Rosen, Ralph M; Farrell, JosephIn the rambling sequence of thoughts in Ecl. 10.31-69 that expresses the state of the lovesick Gallus, Vergil depicts his friend as proposing to abandoning elegy for bucolic poetry, and to take up a pair of activities resumably related to this change. These activities - carving love messages on trees and hunting - are to some extent typical of the unrequited literary, especially pastoral, lover:1Publication Review of Statius, Thebaid IX(1993) Farrell, JosephPublication Walcott's Omeros: The Classical Epic in a Postmodern World(1999) Farrell, JosephWith his plays drawn from Greek mythology and his evocative epic hymn to the Caribbean, Omeros, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott has forced many to rethink the relationships between archaic Greek society and the contemporary world. Joseph Farrell, known especially for his work on classical epic, takes up a debate as to whether Omeros can be considered an epic at all, and suggests that in forcing us even to ask this question, Walcott demands that we reassess the position and assumed supremacy of Western literary epic. In demonstrating the complex relationship of Omeros to the tradition of classical epic, Farrell reveals the contingencies of that tradition and the richness ofWalcott's poem as a work that straddles both epic and novel, classical and modern, scribal and oral.Publication Eduard Fraenkel on Horace and Servius, or, Texts, Contexts, and the Field of "Latin Studies"(2005-01-01) Farrell, JosephThis essay traces the recent trajectory of the field of "Latin Studies" using the example of interpretations of Horace's Carmen saeculare and showing, in particular, the increasingly comprehensive relevance attributed to historical context. It sketches a shift away from formalist interpretation and, to an even greater degree, away from practices, such as textual criticism, that once virtually defined the fieldPublication