Narrative self-consciousness in Virgil’s Aeneid 3

In this paper I intend to examine some instances of narrative and poetic self-consciousness in Aeneid 3 as manifested in the rich textures and inter/intratextualities of its beginning and end. First I discuss the devices used to mark the beginning of the narrative in Book 3 (sailing imagery – key motifs of proems – temporal punctuation) and then I propose a systematic analysis of the end which is clearly articulated and adds to the sense of completion and closure. In this interpretive framework I suggest a new reading of digressum (3.715), fata renarrabat and cursusque docebat (3.717).