Lavinia (novel)

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Lavinia
Lavinia Novel.JPG
First edition cover
Author Ursula K. Le Guin
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Parallel novel
Publisher Harcourt United States
Publication date
April 21, 2008
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages288
Award Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (2009)
ISBN 0-15-101424-8
OCLC 145733040
813/.54 22
LC Class PS3562.E42 L38 2008

Lavinia is the Locus Award-winning [1] novel by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 2008, it was Le Guin's last novel. It is written in a first-person, self-conscious style that recounts the life of Lavinia, a minor character in Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid . [2]

Contents

Synopsis

Lavinia, daughter of the king of the Latins of Laurentum, is sought after by neighbouring kings, but knows she is destined to marry a stranger. This is Aeneas from the Trojan War, who arrives with a large body of Trojans.

An agreement is made but then breaks down and there is war, which is won by the outnumbered Trojans. They found a new city called Lavinium, but Aeneas is killed after three years. Aeneas's elder son Ascanius founds Alba Longa and marries but fails to produce an heir. Lavinia removes her son Silvius from his control and he eventually becomes king of the Latins.

Rome already exists, but as a small settlement that plays no part in events.

Lavinia herself retreats from the world and at the end seems to have turned into an owl. She has all along regarded the world she lives in as unreal, a product of Virgil's imagination.

Background

The book is based on the last six books, or the Iliadic half, of the Aeneid . It is written in a first-person style, and the character Lavinia is aware that she may only exist in the context of a story which an outside narrator is recounting.

Throughout the first part of the novel Lavinia holds conversations with "the poet", the shade of a dying Virgil. In their conversations Virgil explains his role as the author of Lavinia's life, and what he reveals to Lavinia about her life she acknowledges and anticipates as she recounts her story. Lavinia therefore only exists in the context of the poem, and through her conversations she is self-aware of her own textuality.

This novel is not meant to be history. Le Guin says that, "The Trojan War was probably fought in the thirteenth century BC; Rome was founded, possibly, in the eighth, though there is no proper history of it for centuries after that. That Priam's nephew Aeneas of Troy had anything at all to do with the founding of Rome is pure legend, a good deal of it invented by Virgil himself". [3] She also explains that her work is a translation of the last six books of the Aeneid into prose. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aeneas</span> Trojan hero in Greco-Roman mythology

In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite. His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas a second cousin to Priam's children. He is a minor character in Greek mythology and is mentioned in Homer's Iliad. Aeneas receives full treatment in Roman mythology, most extensively in Virgil's Aeneid, where he is cast as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. He became the first true hero of Rome. Snorri Sturluson identifies him with the Norse god Víðarr of the Æsir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgil</span> 1st-century-BC Roman poet

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, were attributed to him in ancient times, but modern scholars consider his authorship of these poems to be dubious.

<i>Aeneid</i> Latin epic poem by Virgil

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. Written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, the Aeneid comprises 9,896 lines in dactylic hexameter. The first six of the poem's twelve books tell the story of Aeneas' wanderings from Troy to Italy, and the poem's second half tells of the Trojans' ultimately victorious war upon the Latins, under whose name Aeneas and his Trojan followers are destined to be subsumed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penthesilea</span> Amazonian queen in Greek mythology

Penthesilea was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Ares and Otrera and the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope and Melanippe. She assisted Troy in the Trojan War, during which she was killed by Achilles or Neoptolemus. The asteroid 271 Penthesilea, discovered in 1887, was named in her honor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ascanius</span> Roman legendary figure

Ascanius was a legendary king of Alba Longa and is the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and Creusa, daughter of Priam. He is a character in Roman mythology, and has a divine lineage, being the son of Aeneas, who is the son of the goddess Venus and the hero Anchises, a relative of the king Priam; thus Ascanius has divine ascendents by both parents, being descendants of god Jupiter and Dardanus. He is also an ancestor of Romulus, Remus and the Gens Julia. Together with his father, he is a major character in Virgil's Aeneid, and he is depicted as one of the founders of the Roman race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evander of Pallantium</span> Culture hero of Greek and Roman myth

In Roman mythology, Evander was a culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who was said to have brought the pantheon, laws, and alphabet of Greece to ancient Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Palatine Hill, Rome, sixty years before the Trojan War. He instituted the festival of the Lupercalia. Evander was deified after his death and an altar was constructed to him on the Aventine Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dido</span> Legendary founder and first queen of Carthage

Dido, also known as Elissa, was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage, in 814 BC. In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre who fled tyranny to found her own city in northwest Africa. Known only through ancient Greek and Roman sources, all of which were written well after Carthage's founding, her historicity remains uncertain. The oldest references to Dido are attributed to Timaeus, who was active around 300 BC, or about five centuries after the date given for the foundation of Carthage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turnus</span> Mythical character King of the Rutuli

Turnus was the legendary King of the Rutuli in Roman history, and the chief antagonist of the hero Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lavinia</span> Wife of Aeneas in Roman mythology

In Roman mythology, Lavinia is the daughter of Latinus and Amata, and the last wife of Aeneas.

According to the medieval poet Jean Bodel, the Matter of Rome is the literary cycle of Greek and Roman mythology, together with episodes from the history of classical antiquity, focusing on military heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Bodel's division of literary cycles also included the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain. The Matter of Rome includes the Matter of Troy, consisting of romances and other texts based on the Trojan War and its legacy, including the adventures of Aeneas.

The Rutuli or Rutulians were an ancient people in Italy. The Rutuli were located in a territory whose capital was the ancient town of Ardea, located about 35 km southeast of Rome.

Lacrimae rerum is the Latin phrase for "tears of things." It derives from Book I, line 462 of the Aeneid, by Roman poet Virgil. Some recent quotations have included rerum lacrimae sunt or sunt lacrimae rerum meaning "there are tears of things."

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<i>Roman dEnéas</i> French romance

Le Roman d'Enéas is a romance of Medieval French literature, dating to c. 1160. It is written in French octosyllabic couplets totaling a little over 10,000 lines. Its subject matter is the tale of Aeneas, based on Virgil's Aeneid. It is one of the three important Romans d'Antiquité of this period; the other two are the Roman de Thèbes (anonymous) and the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cumaean Sibyl</span> Priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae

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<i>Énée et Lavinie</i> (Dauvergne) Opera by Antoine Dauvergne

Énée et Lavinie is an opera by the French composer Antoine Dauvergne, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique on 14 February 1758. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in five acts.

Énée et Lavinie is an opera by the French composer Pascal Collasse, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique on 7 November 1690. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in a prologue and five acts.

The Aeneid has been analyzed by scholars of several different generations and schools of thought to try to determine the political commentary that Virgil had hoped to portray. The major schools of thought include the overarching idea that Virgil had written a story that parallels Roman history at the time it was written as well as messages both in support of and against the rule of Augustus Caesar. Finally, it has been argued that Virgil had a stance on geopolitics which he conveys in the actions of Aeneas and his crew.

<i>Eneida</i> Poem by Ivan Kotlyarevsky

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Eneide is a seven-episode 1971–1972 Italian television drama, adapted by Franco Rossi from Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid. It stars Giulio Brogi as Aeneas and Olga Karlatos as Dido, and also stars Alessandro Haber, Andrea Giordana and Marilù Tolo. RAI originally broadcast the hour-long episodes from 19 December 1971 to 30 January 1972. A shorter theatrical version was released in 1974 as Le avventure di Enea.

References

Notes
  1. "2009 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-29.
  2. Higgins, Charlotte (2009-05-23). "The princess with flaming hair". Guardian Books. London. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
  3. Afterword to Lavinia.
  4. Interview with Le Guin on The Inkwell Review, on her novel Lavinia.
Bibliography