A Bibliography of the Early Printed Editions of Virgil, 1469-1850


Book Description

"A short-title catalogue of all printed editions of Virgil, from 1469 through 1850, containing almost five thousand entries. Each includes the printer, place of publication, names of any translators, editors, and commentators, and an indication of where a copy of the book may be found"--Provided by publisher.




The Protean Virgil


Book Description

The Protean Virgil argues that when we try to understand how and why different readers have responded differently to the same text over time, we should take into account the physical form in which they read the text as well as the text itself. Using Virgil's poetry as a case study in book history, the volume shows that a succession of material forms - manuscript, printed book, illustrated edition, and computer file - undermines the drive toward textual and interpretive stability. This stability is the traditional goal of classical scholarship, which seeks to recover what Virgil wrote and how he intended it to be understood. The manuscript form served to embed Virgil's poetry into Christian culture, which attempted to anchor the content into a compatible theological truth. Readers of early printed material proceeded differently, breaking Virgil's text into memorable moral and stylistic fragments, and collecting those fragments into commonplace books. Furthermore, early illustrated editions present a progression of re-envisionings in which Virgil's poetry was situated within a succession of receiving cultures. In each case, however, the material form helped to generate a method of reading Virgil which worked with this form but which failed to survive the transition to a new union of the textual and the physical. This form-induced instability reaches its climax with computerization, which allows the reader new power to edit the text and to challenge the traditional association of Virgil's poetry with elite culture.




Printing Virgil


Book Description

In this work Craig Kallendorf argues that the printing press played a crucial, and previously unrecognized, role in the reception of the Roman poet Virgil in the Renaissance. Using a new methodology developed at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Printing Virgil shows that the press established which commentaries were disseminated, provided signals for how the Virgilian translations were to be interpreted, shaped the discussion about the authenticity of the minor poems attributed to Virgil, and inserted this material into larger censorship concerns. The editions that were printed during this period transformed Virgil into a poet who could fit into Renaissance culture, but they also determined which aspects of his work could become visible at that time.




Virgil and his Translators


Book Description

This is the first volume to offer a critical overview of the long and complicated history of translations of Virgil from the early modern period to the present day, transcending traditional studies of single translations or particular national traditions in isolation to offer an insightful comparative perspective. The twenty-nine essays in the collection cover numerous European languages - from English, French, and German, to Greek, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Slovenian, and Spanish - but also look well beyond Europe to include discussion of Brazilian, Chinese, Esperanto, Russian, and Turkish translations of Virgil. While the opening two contributions lay down a broad theoretical and comparative framework, the majority conduct comparisons within a particular language and combine detailed case studies with in-depth contextualization and theoretical background, showing how the translations discussed are embedded in their own cultures and historical moments. The final two essays are written from the perspective of contemporary translators, closing out the volume with a profound assessment not only of the influence exerted by the major Roman poet on later literature, but also why translation of a canonical author such as Virgil matters, not only as a national and transnational cultural phenomenon, but as a personal engagement with a literature of enduring power and relevance.




Virgil and His Translators


Book Description

Transcending traditional studies of single translations or particular translation traditions in isolation, this is the first volume to offer a critical overview of Virgil's influence on later literature through the translation history of his poems, from the early modern period to the present day, and throughout Europe and beyond.




The Virgilian Tradition II


Book Description

The Virgilian Tradition II brings together thirteen essays by historian Craig Kallendorf. The essays present a distinctive approach to the reception of the canonical classical author Virgil, that is focused around the early printed books through which that author was read and interpreted within early modern culture. Using the prefaces, dedicatory letters, and commentaries that accompanied the early modern editions of Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, and Appendix Virgiliana, they demonstrate how this paratextual material was used by early readers to develop a more nuanced interpretation of Virgil’s writings than twentieth-century scholars believed they were capable of. The approach developed throughout this volume shows how the emerging field of book history can enrich our understanding of the reception of Greek and Latin authors. This book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history, as well as those interested in book history and cultural history. (CS 1103).




English Humanism and the Reception of Virgil C. 1400-1550


Book Description

English Humanism and the Reception of Virgil c. 1400-1550 reassesses how the spread of Renaissance humanism in England impacted the reception of Virgil. It begins with the first signs of humanist influence in the fifteenth century, and ends at the height of the English Renaissance during the mid-Tudor period. This period witnessed the first extant English translations of Virgil's Aeneid, by William Caxton (1490), Gavin Douglas (1513), and the Earl of Surrey (c. 1543). It also marked the first printings of Virgil's works in England by Richard Pynson (c. 1515) and Wynkyn de Worde (1510s-1520s). Through a fine-grained analysis of surviving manuscripts and early printed editions, Matthew Day questions how and to what extent Renaissance humanism impacted readers' and translators' approaches to Virgil. Building on current scholarship in the fields of book history, classical reception, and translation studies, it draws attention to substantial continuities between the medieval and humanist reception of Virgil's works. Humanist study of Virgil, and indeed of classical poetry more generally, continued to draw many of its aims, methods, and conventions from well-established medieval traditions of learning. In emphasizing the very gradual pace of humanist development and the continuous influence of medieval scholarship, the book comes to a more qualified view of how humanism did and (just as importantly) did not affect Virgilian reading and translation. While recognizing humanist innovations and discoveries, it gives due attention to the understudied, yet far more numerous examples of consistency and traditionalism.




The Cambridge Companion to Virgil


Book Description

Presents stimulating chapters on Virgil and his reception, offering an authoritative overview of the current state of Virgilian studies.




A Commentary on Virgil's Eclogues


Book Description

"The date of the Eclogues is much debated.* A preliminary distinction is in order: that between the composition of the individual poems (which, at least in certain cases, were doubtless read immediately and circulated within a restricted group around the poet) and the publication of the final collection. There are only two obvious clues to the dating of the book: the land confiscations in the territory of Cremona and Mantua, which peaked in the aftermath of the battle of Philippi (though continuing during the early 30s BCE: cf. E. 1 and 9), and the consulship of Asinius Pollio, in 40 BCE (E. 4)"--




Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics


Book Description

Virgil's Georgics, the most neglected of the poet's three major works, is brought to life and infused with fresh meanings in this dynamic collection of new readings. The Georgics is shown to be a rich field of inherited and varied literary forms, actively inviting a wide range of interpretations as well as deep reflection on its place within the tradition of didactic poetry. The essays contained in this volume – contributed by scholars from Australia, Europe and North America – offer new approaches and interpretive methods that greatly enhance our understanding of Virgil's poem. In the process, they unearth an array of literary and philosophical sources which exerted a rich influence on the Georgics but whose impact has hitherto been underestimated in scholarship. A second goal of the volume is to examine how the Georgics – with its profound meditations on humankind, nature, and the socio-political world of its creation – has been (re)interpreted and appropriated by readers and critics from antiquity to the modern era. The volume opens up a number of exciting new research avenues for the study of the reception of the Georgics by highlighting the myriad ways in which the poem has been understood by ancient readers, early modern poets, explorers of the 'New World', and female translators of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.