Hello,
I have recently come to think of something I have read quite a while back. Sadly I cannot find the source again, so I turn to this forum with much hope of renewing this memory. I have read that there was a style (like elegies or epics) in latin literature which turned to “boring” topics (everyday stuff etc.), in order to have a chance to unfold the language despite the topic. They saw it as a challenge to make this boring topic into something exciting for the reader/listener just by language. An example would be the moretum in the appendix of Vergil. I think they transported it from greek literature into the latin, as they did with everything. Am I correctly remembering this and, if yes, what are some other examples of this trend?
Vergil’s Georgics are the most outstanding example of this in Latin. They are ostensibly about agriculture. To a limited extent they purvey some of the mundane details of farming, framed in lavishly spectacular verse, but that’s just a kind of scaffolding or framework, and they actually go far beyond that. Some may find them boring, but I don’t.
Yes, that´s also the work that came to my mind. Maybe my English was not precise enough to bring my idea across. I did not mean that the work is boring. Much the opposite, I meant a mundane thing put into excellent verse and thus being able to purely focus on the language rather than the interesting journey of Aeneas for example. Which may serve as a distraction from the verses. Do you know of any other works like the 2 already mentioned? and also does this trend have its origin with the Neoteroi (who, as I gather, are more concerned with quality as quantity)?