The Virgilian Tradition


Book Description

The essays in this collection approach the reception of the Roman poet Virgil in early modern Europe from the perspective of two areas at the center of current scholarly work in the humanities: book history and the history of reading. The first group of essays uses Virgil's place in post-classical culture to raise questions of broad scholarly interest: How, exactly, does modern reception theory challenge traditional notions of literary practice and value? How do the marginal comments of early readers provide insight into their character and mind? How does rhetoric help shape literary criticism? The second group of essays begins from the premise that the material form in which early modern readers encountered this most important of Latin poets played a key role in how they understood what they read. Thus title pages and illustrations help shape interpretation, with the results of that interpretation in turn becoming the comments that early modern readers regularly entered into the margins of their books. The volume concludes with four more specialized studies that show how these larger issues play out in specific neo-Latin works of the early modern period.




The Virgilian Tradition


Book Description

The essays in this collection approach the reception of the Roman poet Virgil in early modern Europe from the perspective of two areas at the center of current scholarly work in the humanities: book history and the history of reading. The first group of essays uses Virgil's place in post-classical culture to raise questions of broad scholarly interest: How, exactly, does modern reception theory challenge traditional notions of literary practice and value? How do the marginal comments of early readers provide insight into their character and mind? How does rhetoric help shape literary criticism? The second group of essays begins from the premise that the material form in which early modern readers encountered this most important of Latin poets played a key role in how they understood what they read. Thus title pages and illustrations help shape interpretation, with the results of that interpretation in turn becoming the comments that early modern readers regularly entered into the margins of their books. The volume concludes with four more specialized studies that show how these larger issues play out in specific neo-Latin works of the early modern period.




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).




A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition


Book Description

A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its Tradition presents a collection of original interpretive essays that represent an innovative addition to the body of Vergil scholarship. Provides fresh approaches to traditional Vergil scholarship and new insights into unfamiliar aspects of Vergil's textual history Features contributions by an international team of the most distinguished scholars Represents a distinctively original approach to Vergil scholarship




The Epic Successors of Virgil


Book Description

A critically sophisticated introduction to the epic tradition of the early Roman empire.




True Names


Book Description

A key research tool in Vergilian studies, now in paper with substantial new material




Virgil on the Nature of Things


Book Description

The Georgics has for many years been a source of fierce controversy among scholars of Latin literature. Is the work optimistic or pessimistic, pro- or anti-Augustan? Should we read it as a eulogy or a bitter critique of Rome and her imperial ambitions? This book suggests that the ambiguity of the poem is the product of a complex and thorough-going engagement with earlier writers in the didactic tradition: Hesiod, Aratus and - above all - Lucretius. Drawing on both traditional, philological approaches to allusion, and modern theories of intertextuality, it shows how the world-views of the earlier poets are subjected to scrutiny and brought into conflict with each other. Detailed consideration of verbal parallels and of Lucretian themes, imagery and structural patterns in the Georgics forms the basis for a reading of Virgil's poem as an extended meditation on the relations between the individual and society, the gods and the natural environment.




The Medieval Classic


Book Description

The Medieval Classic considers how ancient and medieval commentaries on the Aeneid by Servius, Fulgentius, Bernard Silvestris, and others can give us new insights into four twelfth-century Latin epics -- the Ylias by Joseph of Exeter, the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, the Anticlaudianus by Alan of Lille, and the Architrenius by John of Hauville. Justin Haynes argues that the most profound connections between medieval epic and the Aeneid have been overlooked because ancient and medieval interpretations, as preserved by the commentary tradition, were often radically different from modern ones. By explaining how to interpret the Aeneid, these commentaries directly influenced the way in which medieval authors were inspired by the poem. At the same time, these commentaries allow us a greater awareness of the generic expectations held by medieval readers. Because two of the medieval epics considered here are allegorical narratives, this book offers new perspectives on the importance of commentaries in the development of allegorical literature. Thus, The Medieval Classic contributes to our understanding of ancient and medieval perceptions of the Aeneid while exploring the importance of commentaries in shaping poetic composition, imitation, and the history of allegorical literature.




Reading Virgil and His Texts


Book Description

Dynamic textual interplay: inherent and inherited




A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and its Tradition


Book Description

A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its Tradition presents a collection of original interpretive essays that represent an innovative addition to the body of Vergil scholarship. Provides fresh approaches to traditional Vergil scholarship and new insights into unfamiliar aspects of Vergil's textual history Features contributions by an international team of the most distinguished scholars Represents a distinctively original approach to Vergil scholarship