You Too: The Narratology of Apostrophe and Second-Person Narrative in Virgil’s Georgics

Abstract

Narratological approaches to classical literature have long since extended beyond the limits of the conventionally narrative genres of epic, historiography, and the novel to encompass less obvious genres such as lyric, elegy, and tragedy.2 Didactic poetry, however, has received relatively little attention. There has been some work on “narrative technique” in the more obviously “narrative” sections, such as the Athenian plague in de Rerum Natura (DRN) 6 or the “Aristaeus” in Georgics 4, but these episodes, though integral to the didactic project of their respective poems, are nevertheless the least characteristic of didactic’s distinctive qualities.3 The excellent studies by Don Fowler (2000), Monica Gale (2004), and Simon