VERGIL TALKS TECHNIQUE: METAPOETIC ARBORICULTURE IN GEORGICS 2.

Vergil's discussion of tree cultivation in Georgics 2 can be read metapoetically as a literary critical treatise on genre, imitation, and allusion. In Eclogue 10 and Georgics 2, Vergil develops a technique I call metapoetic allegory, in which he literalizes the metaphorical terms of literary criticism, including everyday words that his contemporaries considered to be metaphorically derived, like liber ("book" < liber "bark"). Thus he highlights the analogy between tree cultivation and poetic composition: like trees, poems are harmed by predecessors' shadows, but flourish through generic transplanting and intertextual grafting. Read in this way, Vergil's texts imply a polemical vision of literary history as progress, not decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]