Dido's wound is internal at the beginning of the book, but real by the end.

• A. Damien Nelis
• B. Ian Du Quesnay
• C. Richard Jenkyns
• D. Philip Hardie

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how a scholar reads Dido’s wound as changing from an inward, psychological wound to a real, enacted one as the narrative progresses. Damien Nelis makes this move explicit: he treats Dido’s wound as something felt internally at the start—a wound of love, concern, and emotional injury within Dido—yet by the later parts of the story it becomes embodied in the drama and its consequences. In other words, the wound begins as a mental/affective condition and becomes tangible through the plot’s unfolding, culminating in the real, dramatic outcomes of the tragedy.

This focus aligns with Nelis’s work on the psychology of the epic and how personal affliction can drive action within Virgil’s narrative. Other scholars you might see in this field tend to emphasize different angles—ritual, reception, or stylistic aspects of the epic—so their discussions aren’t anchored to this particular internal-to-real transformation of Dido’s wound.