This study traces the steady decline of classical authority in English literature from the mid-seventeenth century and the role of translation in shifting the emphasis away the classical learning. The author focuses on Virgil, once the most revered of poets but also explores the fate of some of his fellow Ancients.

The querelle des anciens et des modernes - the question whether writers should imitate the classics or use literary forms which seemed more suited to their own era - had been debated in Europe since the earliest days of the Renaissance. This book analyses the development of the querelle following the adoption of the argument of the modernist faction of seventeenth-century France.