Poet and Artist: Imaging the Aeneid (review)

A high school-level textbook, this slender but impressive paperback charts its course from the Advanced Placement syllabus. Yet its approach is very different than most AP-driven textbooks, for it is supplemented with a user-friendly CD-ROM that houses handsome illustrations from John Dryden's Works of Virgil. As Califf points out in his well-written and highly informative introduction, the illustrations that accompanied the editio princeps of Dryden's Virgil are "all but unknown to modern classicists" (xi). Thus, centered as it is on the illustrations, the approach of this book is markedly different from other high school textbooks, for, as Bender states in the preface, the instructor can use the illustrations to prompt the student to "make connections between word and image" (ix).

The first edition of Dryden's Works of Virgil appeared in 1697. Califf rightly credits by name the artists who were responsible for the illustrations (xii–xiv): Francis Cleyn (1570–1630), the principal inventor (designer) of the collection, as well as the skilled illustrators Wenceslaus Hollar, Pierre Lombart, and William Faithorne. Califf might have made it a bit clearer that, for example, Cleyn died the year before Dryden was born, and thus there was no direct link between the poet and that artist. All of the illustrators, in fact, died before the publication of Dryden's translation, and Califf could have clarified a bit more precisely the nature of the relationship of these poets to the translator and to one another. Yet this is but a minor criticism.

Most of the very impressive collection of images on the CD-ROM are taken from Bender's personal copy of the 1698 edition of Dryden's translation; the "Laocoon," however, comes from the University of Pennsylvania's copy of that edition, and "The Trojan Horse," which is missing both from Bender's copy and from that of the University of Pennsylvania, is reproduced from the earlier translation of the Aeneid by Ogilby (1654). All of the images have been reproduced at 96 dpi, which resolution permits them to be displayed through an LCD projector, as well as on a computer screen.

Inasmuch as it is intended chiefly for a high school audience, not surprisingly this book has a distinctly didactic feel to it. The material, the complete Latin text of Aeneid 1–6, contains sections that have been italicized, indicating that these correspond to an excerpt from the Aeneid that the Dryden or Ogilby prints illustrate. From a pedagogical point of view, the concept is strategic. Study questions, none of which seems to me patronizing or, at the other extreme, facile, are provided, ostensibly "to guide the students through their study of the Dryden illustrations" (1). As Bender notes, "reflection on how the illustrator has interpreted the Latin Text will enhance the students' literary critical acumen" (1). The student is also urged to look for clues to the Latin based on the artwork, as well as items missing from the illustration (ix). Thus, to interpret the picture, each student is compelled to read the Latin carefully. This is not merely a tip of the hat, broadly speaking, to the tradition of Vergilian Nachleben through translation and illustration. Rather, this book encompasses a very clever didactic strategy that bridges the gulf between word and image that, for example, Lessing's Laocoön posits and most classicists tacitly accept.

In short, though the book is slender and might well have offered even more, Bender and Califf have in some measure opened a new vista upon the study and didactic presentation of Vergil. Such an approach should and, indeed, may well cause the student to read and reread the Latin text; see Bender's open exhortation to the student to do so (ix). Add to this that the students are encountering rare illustrations and engaging art in ways they may not have previously. I can not say enough good things about this approach.

I recommend this...