ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by laying out Zora Neale Hurston’s classical education. It then focuses on her use of the Aeneid throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God to look at the way that she rewrites Dido and Aeneas through Janie and Tea Cake. Scholars have pointed to the influence of these other elements alongside African American oral storytelling on her best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, while the presence of Vergil’s Aeneid has gone unnoticed. In order to clarify how Hurston alludes to Vergil, who “held a central place within the black classical curriculum,” the chapter briefly discusses these other influences. After the fragile connection at the future lovers’ first meeting, Hurston accesses a more direct Vergilian response. The chapter also discusses when Hurston marks her allusions to the classical world. Hurston’s tempestuous engagement with one of the most imperialistically charged passages in the Aeneid gains force as a critique for the imperial thrust of that poem.
