The Other Virgil: `Pessimistic' Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture (Classical Presences)

Kallendorf, Craig

ISBN 10: 0199212368 / ISBN 13: 9780199212361

Published by Oxford University Press, 2007

About this Item

Seller Inventory # c063109

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Other Virgil: `Pessimistic' Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture (Classical Presences)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199212368
• ISBN 13: 9780199212361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Ancient & Classical Studies

About this title

Synopsis

The Other Virgil tells the story of how a classic like the Aeneid can say different things to different people. As a school text it was generally taught to support the values and ideals of a succession of postclassical societies, but between 1500 and 1800 a number of unusually sensitive readers responded to cues in the text that call into question what the poem appears to be supporting. This book focuses on the literary works written by these readers, to show how they used the Aeneid as a model for poems that probed and challenged the dominant values of their society, just as Virgil had done centuries before. Some of these poems are not as well known today as they should be, but others, like Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's The Tempest, are; in the latter case, the poems can be understood in new ways once their relationship to the 'other Virgil' is made clear.

About the Author

Craig Kallendorf is Professor of English and Classics, Texas A&M University.