Music, Poetry, and Patronage: Land Expropriation in Virgil and in Post Year-2000 Zimbabwe
Abstract
The following discussion compares the use of music and poetry as propaganda tools in issues to do with the State, land, and its (re) distribution. Focus will be directed at the implementation of land redistribution policies in Augustan Rome, and in Zimbabwe during the post year 2000 period: the time when the government expropriated land from the largely White commercial farmers, without compensation, giving the land to the landless Black majorities in the country. One common similarity from the two periods is the use of poetry and music as political propaganda, to support and justify these radical political decisions. At the same time, we also see poetry being used as a form of protest by the victims of these activities. This research will also speculate whether this behaviour is a universal human political behaviour or is it possible that the ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe was aware of, and copying the Roman model.
Abstract
The following discussion compares the use of music and poetry as propaganda tools in issues to do with the State, land, and its (re) distribution. Focus will be directed at the implementation of land redistribution policies in Augustan Rome, and in Zimbabwe during the post year 2000 period: the time when the government expropriated land from the largely White commercial farmers, without compensation, giving the land to the landless Black majorities in the country. One common similarity from the two periods is the use of poetry and music as political propaganda, to support and justify these radical political decisions. At the same time, we also see poetry being used as a form of protest by the victims of these activities. This research will also speculate whether this behaviour is a universal human political behaviour or is it possible that the ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe was aware of, and copying the Roman model.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: Vergil and the Land VII
- Lands-Cape and Memory: Virgil’s African Cartographies 1
- Thinking like Mantua: Vergil and Land Ethic 23
- Seamus Heaney’s Eclogues, Virgil, and the Land 43
- Reimagining Martalas’ Virgil: Colonization, Collective Amnesia, and the Land in South Africa 57
- ‘What about Virgil in your Letter on the Land, Mr. Grevenbroek?’ Exile, Homecoming, and the Epic Genre in 17th-century European Imaginations of Africa 85
- Os cruentum: Lions in Vergil’s Poetic Landscape 101
- Music, Poetry, and Patronage: Land Expropriation in Virgil and in Post Year-2000 Zimbabwe 119
- Virgil in Johannesburg 135
- Imagining the Land: Political Identity in the Aeneid 149
- Translating Virgil’s ‘Land’ Eclogues 1 and 9 in Contemporary South Africa 169
- Afterword: A Vergilian Epilogue from the Understory of Georgic 1 185
- List of Contributors 205
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction: Vergil and the Land VII
- Lands-Cape and Memory: Virgil’s African Cartographies 1
- Thinking like Mantua: Vergil and Land Ethic 23
- Seamus Heaney’s Eclogues, Virgil, and the Land 43
- Reimagining Martalas’ Virgil: Colonization, Collective Amnesia, and the Land in South Africa 57
- ‘What about Virgil in your Letter on the Land, Mr. Grevenbroek?’ Exile, Homecoming, and the Epic Genre in 17th-century European Imaginations of Africa 85
- Os cruentum: Lions in Vergil’s Poetic Landscape 101
- Music, Poetry, and Patronage: Land Expropriation in Virgil and in Post Year-2000 Zimbabwe 119
- Virgil in Johannesburg 135
- Imagining the Land: Political Identity in the Aeneid 149
- Translating Virgil’s ‘Land’ Eclogues 1 and 9 in Contemporary South Africa 169
- Afterword: A Vergilian Epilogue from the Understory of Georgic 1 185
- List of Contributors 205
- Index Rerum et Nominum
- Index Locorum
