Poets and Critics Read Vergil

Vergil has exerted a stronger grasp on the poetic imagination and critical scholarship than almost any other poet. This absorbing book—a collection of essays and conversations by such leading poets and classicists as Joseph Brodsky, Christine Perkell, Michael C. J. Putnam, and Mark Strand—explores the ways in which Vergil’s work has inspired readers of today.

The book takes a broad look at questions of historicism: how we read a work written 2,000 years ago. There are not only close readings of the Aeneid, the Eclogues, and Georgics, but also essays dealing with such topics as Vergil’s influence from the Renaissance to the present. The book concludes with two special sections: a lively conversation on translation between Robert Fagles and Sarah Spence and a "virtual" roundtable discussion in which Spence has woven together the responses of poets and critics to Vergil’s poetry.

Sarah Spence is professor of classics at the University of Georgia.

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