Virgil's didactic poem on farming — of crops, vines, cattle, and bees — as a meditation on labor, order, and Italy.
Books that mention The Georgics (8)
My Ántonia by Willa Cather: “I propped my book open and stared listlessly at the page of the 'Georgics' where tomorrow's lesson began.”
The Valley of Decision by Edith Wharton: “His imagination took fire over the dry pages of Cornelius Nepos, glowed with the mild pastoral warmth of the Georgics and burst into flame at the first hexameters of the Aeneid.”
On Beauty by Zadie Smith: “You know, what I've always felt is, well, for instance, in The Georgics - ' 'The what?' 'Virgil.'”
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: “"The Georgics?" "No." (William guessing at the identity of a book)”
The Country Life by Rachel Cusk: “"What makes the corncrops glad, under which star / To turn the soil, Maecenas..." (epigraph)”
The Essays by Michel de Montaigne: “I have always thought that, in poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most accomplished piece in poetry…”
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol: “None the less, he said, he meant to peg away until every peasant on the estate should, as he walked behind the plough, indulge in a regular course of reading Franklin's Notes on Electricity, Virgil's Georgics, or some work on the chemical properties of soil.”
The Pirate by Walter Scott: “He endured the Bucolics of Virgil--the Georgics he had by heart--but the Aeneid he could not away with;”