Metalepsis, Grief, and Narrative in Aeneid 2

Abstract

This chapter investigates the emotional function of metalepsis by considering the case of Virgil, Aeneid 2, a book which combines intense emotion with great narrative complexity. Analysing multiple metaleptic features in the book, it offers a model for reading emotional intensity in terms of immersion and alienation, and concludes that metalepsis may paradoxically both alienate readers and intensify their emotional engagement. The chapter begins by exploring the layered first-person narratives produced by Aeneas and Sinon, both of whom use their grief to establish authority and create a positive reception. It argues that the constant interplay between the levels of the external narrator and these two internal ones creates dissonances for readers, but ultimately intensifies the emotional response of the various levels of audience, both internal (Dido) and external. The chapter then demonstrates that moments of narrative transition are often characterized both by emotional intensity and by lack of narrative realism, opening up the potential for metalepsis by means such as anachronism and simile. A study of the deaths of Polites and Priam shows how puns, intertextual references, and connections to the contemporary world of author and audience can all serve to enhance immediacy even when one might expect them to create distance. Finally, the chapter asks in what sense one can really say with Genette that Virgil ‘has Dido die’, making the case that the death of Dido, too, is a metaleptic moment with paradoxical emotional effects.