Culex – The Gnat: The process of analyzing and translating a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana

The Culex, a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana, is an epyllion that the literary tradition has been attributing since Antiquity to the youth of Publius Vergilius Maro. Despite all the doubts related to this attribution, the work composed of 414 dactylic hexameters is a rich example of the poetry pro...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Gouvêa Júnior, Márcio Meirelles
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:Brasil
Institución:Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF)
Repositorio:Rónai
Idioma:portugués
OAI Identifier:oai:periodicos.ufjf.br:article/35797
Acceso en línea:https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/ronai/article/view/35797
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Culex
Appendix Vergiliana
epyllium
Vergil
epílio
Virgílio
Descripción
Sumario:The Culex, a poem from the Appendix Vergiliana, is an epyllion that the literary tradition has been attributing since Antiquity to the youth of Publius Vergilius Maro. Despite all the doubts related to this attribution, the work composed of 414 dactylic hexameters is a rich example of the poetry produced during the 1st century AD, and portrays the main aspects of neoteric aesthetics, with influences from Lucretius and Catullus. Considered by most scholars a spurious work, it is analyzed by some as a parody, by others as a complement to Virgil's biography, or as a resource to compose the fictional biography of the Homerus Romanus. Thus, the exegesis of this poem has been proved inexhaustible. Its translation into Portuguese dodecasyllablic verses, proposed here by the first time, is followed by a minimum critical apparatus, which allows the understanding and intends to achieve some reverberation of the original Latin text, Vergilian or not, in contemporaneity, despite all the challenges regarding the translator's task.