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“On the Chance”: An Allusion to Vergil’s Aeneid in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
- Classical World
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 106, Number 1, Fall 2012
- pp. 91-95
- 10.1353/clw.2013.0021
- Article
- Additional Information
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Rat’s description of Otter’s search for his missing son, Portly, in Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows contains an allusion to Aeneas’ search for his wife, Creusa, in book 2 of Vergil’s Aeneid during the final fall of Troy. This reference economically imports a number of elements more appropriate to epic than pastoral literature. The result is a heightened sense of emotion and concern but, ironically, the reinforcement of the boundaries of the idyllic pastoral world.