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Literary Criticism Ancient & Classical

Vergil and Elegy

edited by Alison Keith & Micah Y. Myers

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2023
Category
Ancient & Classical, Rome, Ancient & Classical
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487547950
    Publish Date
    Apr 2023
    List Price
    $115.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487547967
    Publish Date
    Apr 2023
    List Price
    $115.00

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Description

Born in 70 BCE, the Roman poet Vergil came of age during a period of literary experimentalism among Latin authors. These authors introduced new Greek verse forms and metres into the existing repertoire of Latin poetic genres and measures, foremost among them being elegy, a genre that the ancients thought originated in funeral lament, but which in classical Rome became first-person poetry about the poet-lover’s amatory vicissitudes. Despite the influence of notable elegists on Vergil’s early poetry, his critics have rarely paid attention to his engagement with the genre across his body of work.

 

This collection is devoted to an exploration of Vergil’s multifaceted relations with elegy. Contributors shed light on Vergil’s interactions with the genre and its practitioners across classical, medieval, and early modern periods. The book investigates Vergil’s hexameter poetry in relation to contemporary Latin elegy by Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and the subsequent reception of Vergil’s radical combination of epic with elegy by later Latin and Italian authors. Filling a striking gap in the scholarship, Vergil and Elegy illuminates the famous poet’s wide-ranging engagement with the genre of elegy across his oeuvre.

About the authors

Alison Keith is a professor of classics, comparative literature, medieval studies, and women and gender studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic.

Alison Keith's profile page

Micah Y. Myers is an associate professor of classics at Kenyon College.

Micah Y. Myers' profile page