The Cambridge Companion to Virgil

Front Cover
Charles Martindale
Cambridge University Press, Oct 2, 1997 - History - 370 pages
Virgil became a school author in his own lifetime and the centre of the Western canon for the next 1800 years, exerting a major influence on European literature, art, and politics. This Companion is designed as an indispensable guide for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of an author critical to so many disciplines. It consists of essays by seventeen scholars from Britain, the USA, Ireland and Italy which offer a range of different perspectives both traditional and innovative on Virgil's works, and a renewed sense of why Virgil matters today. The Companion is divided into four main sections, focussing on reception, genre, context, and form. This ground-breaking book not only provides a wealth of material for an informed reading but also offers sophisticated insights which point to the shape of Virgilian scholarship and criticism to come.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction The classic of all Europe
1
Translation and reception
19
Virgil in English translation
21
Modern receptions and their interpretative implications
38
Aspects of Virgils reception in antiquity
56
The Virgil commentary of Servius
73
Virgils from Dante to Milton
79
Virgil in art
91
Rome and its traditions
188
Virgil and the cosmos religious and philosophical ideas
204
The Virgilian intertext
222
Contents and forms
239
Virgils style
241
Virgilian narrative
259
Ecphrasis
271
Approaching characterisation in Virgil
282

Genre and poetic career
105
Green politics the Eclogues
107
Virgilian didaxis value and meaning in the Georgics
125
Virgilian epic
145
Closure the Book of Virgil
155
Contexts of production
167
Poetry and power Virgils poetry in contemporary context
169
Sons and lovers sexuality and gender in Virgils poetry
294
Virgil and tragedy
312
Envoi the death of Virgil
327
Dateline
337
List of works cited
340
Index
359
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases