General Introduction to
the Several Commentaries
A KEY to Markers for Intertextual
Links within
Each Eclogue, The Book
of Bucolics, & Diverse Traditions
Followed by a TABLE of
Cited Texts &
Their Linking Styles, Modes
& Motifs
RINT = Recursion INTernal: marker for any
item recursive to a moment within an eclogue or the Book
of Bucolics. Recursions always imply
{sim/DIFF},
a marker designed to invoke both the
similarity that makes us associate texts
and the
DIFFerence between them that we inevitably
discover through closer study:
cf. oppositio in imitando &
Hinds
Allusion & Intertext pp. 123-129.
Such recursive links define structure & development
within a work [cf. also the TROPES below
& remember, e.g., how one god in different
roles (beginning, middle & end) structures
Iliad 1].
REXT = Recursion EXTernal: marker for any
item recursive to a moment in works by other writers, again always implying
{sim/DIFF}
as
defined above.
Links recursive to other texts provide
our evidence for distinctions among genres [synchrony]
& developments within traditions [diachrony].
Although both
RINT & REXT always assume {sim/DIFF},
it gets repeated at times in the commentaries
to
provoke special alertness of pointed & so-called
PROgrammatic difference [n.b.pro+gram=
pre-
if not pro- + scribe].
PROVID: a marker used occasionally for items
that will recur later, sc. adumbration, fore-shadowing.
SOME TROPES that engineer development
& weave structure: anaphora, auxesis
(incrementum),chiasmus (sc. 'crossism'),
climax,
metonymy.