The Cambridge Companion to Virgil

by Edited by Charles Martindale

• ISBN13: 9780521495394
• ISBN10: 0521495393
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-11-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 fresh and sophisticated insights which point to the shape of Virgilian scholarship and criticism to come.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	x	(3)
List of contributors	xiii	(4)
Preface	xvii
1 Introduction: `The classic of all Europe'	1	(18)
CHARLES MARTINDALE
Part I: Translation and reception	19	(86)
2 Virgil in English translation	21	(17)
COLIN BURROW
3 Modern receptions and their interpretative implications	38	(18)
DUNCAN F. KENNEDY
4 Aspects of Virgil's reception in antiquity	56	(17)
R. J. TARRANT
5 The Virgil commentary of Servius	73	(6)
DON FOWLER
6 Virgils, from Dante to Milton	79	(12)
COLIN BURROW
7 Virgil in art	91	(14)
M. J. H. LIVERSIDGE
Part 2: Genre and poetic career	105	(62)
8 Green politics: the Eclogues	107	(18)
CHARLES MARTINDALE
9 Virgilian didaxis: value and meaning in the Georgics	125	(20)
WILLIAM BATSTONE
10 Virgilian epic	145	(10)
DUNCAN F. KENNEDY
11 Closure: the Book of Virgil	155	(12)
ELENA THEODORAKOPOULOS
Part 3: Contexts of production	167	(72)
12 Poetry and power: Virgil's poetry in contemporary context	169	(19)
R. J. TARRANT
13 Rome and its traditions	188	(16)
JAMES E. G. ZETZEL
14 Virgil and the cosmos: religious and philosophical ideas	204	(18)
SUSANNA MORTON BRAUND
15 The Virgilian intertext	222	(17)
JOSEPH FARRELL
Part 4: Contents and forms	239	(98)
16 Virgil's style	241	(18)
JAMES J. O'HARA
17 Virgilian narrative	259	(23)
(a) Story-telling	259	(12)
DON FOWLER
(b) Ecphrasis	271	(11)
ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI
18 Approaching characterisation in Virgil	282	(12)
ANDREW LAIRD
19 Sons and lovers: sexuality and gender in Virgil's poetry	294	(18)
ELLEN OLIENSIS
20 Virgil and tragedy	312	(15)
PHILIP HARDIE
21 Envoi: the death of Virgil	327	(10)
FIONA COX
Dateline	337	(3)
Genevieve Liveley
List of works cited	340	(19)
Index	359