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Imagining an Italian Stallion: Natural Imagery and Ethnic Identity in the Aeneid
(2011) Keogh, Abby; LaLonde, Danielle
I argue that in the Aeneid natural imagery establishes Aeneas’s deep-rooted bond to Italy and Turnus’s ties to foreign lands, thus undermining Turnus’s claim to the Latin throne. Through close readings of specific passages I demonstrate that each time Aeneas goes ashore on a new land he describes the landscape of the place with ominous language; however, upon reaching Italy, the narrator, focalized through Aeneas, describes the environment in joyful language. Thus the poem exhibits how Aeneas’s responses to landscape illustrate his attachment to no other land but Italy. Through the animal imagery on the armor of Turnus and that of Aeneas, as well as through the extensive similes likening Turnus to animals or elements of the natural environment, the poem associates Turnus with foreign beasts and lands, thus distancing him from his Italian heritage. As a result of this manipulation of the natural environment, the poem gives credence to Aeneas’s, not Turnus’s, entitlement to the Latin throne.