• Theoretical approaches: obviously simplified: there are whole books and articles etc. that take each approach: this is just a quick stab at some
  
• Philological: "zero-degree" of theory
• looks at the polish, craft, figures, structure, etc. as something potentially beautiful/great/artistic as such. Often looks to individual words, phrases.
• supposes that there is one poetic voice, Virgil's, that we hear in the poem.
• this approach is happy to take whatever another approach says and incorporate it, somewhat haphazardly, but it does not bother much with the underlying theory of other approaches.
  
• "Harvard School"
• sees two voices
• one optimistic: Augustan Ideology: imperial triumphalism: this Virgil is celebrating his princeps, the ruler of the known world, Augustus
  
• one pessimistic: dwells on loss and sorrow: loss of innocence, deception, furor of Junoa (and Aeneas) as negative moral factor tainting authority: this Virgil sees all the horror and the destruction and the grief that an empire carries in its wake: its eyes are wide open to the negative side of Augustus' rule
  
• intentional lack of resolution: things stand in tension
• a poet need not resolve a tension: sometimes the art lies in maintaining the tension, walking that tightrope of contradiction: both glorifying and detesting the same thing.
  
• Marxists can exploit the same idea: two voices, but for a different aim: to look at social structure
• dominant political forces v. oppressed
• brutal deaths, war, betrayal, as costs of dominance
• the explicit power narrative at the same time contains an undertow that undermines it
• not so much ethical/moral/aesthetic as it is concerned with social and political structures of class and economy
  
• New Historicists
• literature as part of intellectual history: a text as always embedded in a collection of other "texts" (some of them not verbal but rather material: think of monuments, architecture, art, etc.) and is part of the economy within which it arises: truth and human  nature are not accessible via literature.
  
• for the victors, history is goal-directed, fulfilment of destiny: conquest is imposition of order,
  
• for losers, history is chaotic and senseless
• in wandering, Aeneas and followers are losers: later they become victors
• Dido starts out a victor in Carthage, but in the end is a loser
• For a quick sketch of new historicism, go to the source of all verifiable known true facts (Wikipedia): if you find it lacking, improve it yourself (that is its genius, after all)
  
• New Critics
• interpret a work as a world unto itself: look for unity.
  
• paradox, tension, ambiguity: resolved to create unity
• this is about trying to understand a work by itself, by its own patterns and rules, not by relating it to the outside world.
• the work has its own internal logic and structure, which should be studied and discovered by using evidence from within the work
  
• Structuralism
• looks for systems of symbols, codes, and socially conditioned meaning (that words and other things only have meaning via connections and relations, not in themselves)
• an "epic code"
• intertextuality to create structure within which the work acquires meaning and gives meaning to others
• patterns of plot, etc.
• Deconstruction
• interprets work as disunity
• exploits tension, contradiction, ambiguity to show lack of unity
• looks for where meaning fails, where norms fall apart, where social relations fail
• those are interesting and important points in a work
  
• things are inevitably unresolved: there can be no privileged true meaning
• multiple irreducible voices emerge from a text
• Gender
  
• furor, the negative force, is exhibited greatly by women (Juno, Dido)
• piety and imperium (legitimate governmental power) exhibited by men
• further ways to interpret the Aeneid that are less theory-bound.
  
• grief as a valuable emotion set beside triumphalism
• utopian court of Dido as female-run idealization of male-created ruling order
• movement of Aeneas away from Troy leaving dead/damaged women in his wake as counterbalance to Odyssey's tale of successful return to previous harmonious state
  
• questions and issues that are addressed by above:
• is there one voice, one message?
• are the voices multiple, but each unambiguous and coherent?
• if multiple voices, do they contain the seeds of their own dissolution?
• is the voice the voice of the state, the empire: is this political propaganda?
• is there room for the individual voice (Dido? Anna, Juturna?)
• how do the different voices relate to each other: oppositional? complementary? different levels and not in tension? in tension?
• is it pure naïveté to imagine that Virgil's voice can be detected?
• is it worth being naîve once in a while, on purpose, to hear or construct something that might be there?
  
• Narrative questions
  
• what is the difference between the order in which things are presented and their chronological order? is it significant? How?
• how are things focalized: who is speaking? whose view is presented? how much space/detail does each scene get? what senses are used to access what is conveyed?
  
• how is the geography represented: does it have emotions, reactions to humans? how do the humans give it meaning? all of the Aeneid happens within a geographical world, one that has a relation to the "real" world, and one that gives meaning to various physical spaces and thus makes them "places."