Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The Present Tense in Virgil's Aeneid

The Present Tense in Virgil's Aeneid THE PRESENT TENSE IN VIRGIL’S AENEID  HARM PINKSTER The overwhelming frequency of the use of the present tense in Virgil as a narrative tense for past events is a well-known fact that has been discussed by several critics such as Koller (1951), Quinn (1968) and Von Albrecht (1970; 1999). The use of the historic present is normal in stories in comedy, in the fragments of pre- classical historians such as Claudius Quadrigarius and in the pseudo- caesarian works (see Militerni della Morte 1996, 11-33 on the Bellum Africum ). In longer narrative sections in Caesar and Cicero (see Pinkster 1998a) it is the most frequent narrative tense. However, whereas in Caesar, Cicero, and others the historic present is mainly used in clauses in which a perfect might be appropriate, that is for successive events constituting the main story line, Virgil uses it freely in clauses where the imperfect could have been used instead, for example for background information and for simultaneous events and states, as in the beginning of book four (cf. Kravar 1971). The same thing is re fl ected in the fact that Virgil uses the present with all sorts of verbs (including durative ones), http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Mnemosyne Brill

The Present Tense in Virgil's Aeneid

Mnemosyne , Volume 52 (6): 705 – Jan 1, 1999

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/the-present-tense-in-virgil-s-aeneid-6sA1lHpTqa

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1999 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0026-7074
eISSN
1568-525X
DOI
10.1163/1568525991518302
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

THE PRESENT TENSE IN VIRGIL’S AENEID  HARM PINKSTER The overwhelming frequency of the use of the present tense in Virgil as a narrative tense for past events is a well-known fact that has been discussed by several critics such as Koller (1951), Quinn (1968) and Von Albrecht (1970; 1999). The use of the historic present is normal in stories in comedy, in the fragments of pre- classical historians such as Claudius Quadrigarius and in the pseudo- caesarian works (see Militerni della Morte 1996, 11-33 on the Bellum Africum ). In longer narrative sections in Caesar and Cicero (see Pinkster 1998a) it is the most frequent narrative tense. However, whereas in Caesar, Cicero, and others the historic present is mainly used in clauses in which a perfect might be appropriate, that is for successive events constituting the main story line, Virgil uses it freely in clauses where the imperfect could have been used instead, for example for background information and for simultaneous events and states, as in the beginning of book four (cf. Kravar 1971). The same thing is re fl ected in the fact that Virgil uses the present with all sorts of verbs (including durative ones),

Journal

MnemosyneBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1999

There are no references for this article.