The Environmental Poetry of Augustan Rome

This book reveals central texts of Augustan poetry-Vergil's Eclogues and Georgics, and Horace's Odes-to be environmental poetry. In contrast to readings that assume forms of nature poetry are mere Romantic projections, that suggest Roman authors did not care about the environment, or that relegate place to the status of background and setting, it uses both ecocritical theory and close, contextualized readings to show how Horace and Vergil make issues of place, environment, and ecology central to their poetry. As the book argues, each work also creates a distinctive environmental poetics, in which the nonhuman world and particular local environments help shape the specific qualities of its poetry. By attending to the environmental and place-based poetics of these works, the book generates new readings of Vergil and Horace while deepening and complicating how we understand the traditions and concepts of environmental literature.

• Draws on recent criticism and theory from the field of environmental literary criticism to generate new insights into ancient texts, and helps bring environmental literary criticism into conversation with classics and premodern literature
• Offers new perspectives on familiar texts, while also contextualizing environmental and place-based readings with reference to ancient literary, philosophical, cultural, and political traditions
• Provides sustained, large-scale readings of central texts of Latin literature