These books are intended to make Virgil's Latin accessible even to those with a fairly rudimentary knowledge of the language. There is a departure here from the format of the electronic books, with short sections generally being presented on single, or double, pages and endnotes entirely avoided. A limited number of additional footnotes is included, but only what is felt necessary for a basic understanding of the story and the grammar. Some more detailed footnotes have been taken from Conington's edition of the Aeneid.

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

"For T. S. Eliot, Virgil was not merely one of the great masters but 'our classic, the classic of all Europe'. Perhaps no other writer has generated a longer and larger tradition of commentary, translation and imitation." "From Chaucer to W. H. Auden and Robert Lowell, Virgil is a defining presence in English poetry. The Eclogues and Georgics inspired the pastorals of Spenser, Milton and Pope; the Aeneid's pathos, spiritual insights and long-suffering hero - who struggles with doubt, despair and the loss of everything he loves to found the Roman race - made it the model epic. Dryden's complete Virgil in heroic couplets sums up the supersedes his predecessors, yet later translators include Wordsworth, William Morris, Robert Bridges and Cecil Day Lewis. This selection consists largely of extracts from straight translations, along with a number of pieces illustrating Virgil's influence; celebrated episodes like the death of Dido and Aeneas's descent into the underworld appear in several different versions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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