The Narrator's Voice: A Narratological Reappraisal of Apostrophe in Virgil's Aeneid

The ultimate effect of Virgilian apostrophe is debated. Some critics see in Virgil's apostrophe the narrator's sympathy for the victims of a war, and others, such as G. B. Conte, find that apostrophe actually helps to distance the narrator from the defeated. In this article, the argument is made that the treatment of apostrophe is tied to the problem of representing both grief and narrative closure. Apostrophe reveals another level of commentary on the suffering caused by Aeneas's war in Latium. A narratological approach to this topic shows that, in apostrophe, Virgil both confirms the importance of Roman imperium and also questions whether its cost is not too high.