The age of discovery, the age of reconnaissance, was also a great age of classical scholarship. This is probably not a coincidence: colonization is one of the leading themes in ancient history, and figures prominently in literary texts like the Aeneid. The colonization of Italy, as narrated in the second half of Virgil's poem, has been characterized as "the founding legend of Western civilization." But there were other models, as well. In particular, there was the ancient colony at Carthage, Virgil's description of which, in the Aeneid, provided Shakespeare, in The Tempest, with a setting, a situation, and some of his characters.
David Scott Wilson-Okamura is assistant professor of English at East Carolina University. His articles on Virgil, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Dante have appeared in ELH, English Literary Renaissance, Spenser Studies, and Dante Studies. He is author of two forthcoming books, Spenser's International Style and Virgil in the Renaissance.
The disciplines of classical scholarship were established in their modern form between 1300 and 1600, and Virgil was a test case for many of them. This book is concerned with what became of Virgil in this period, how he was understood, and how his poems were recycled. What did readers assume about Virgil in the long decades between Dante and Sidney, Petrarch and Spenser, Boccaccio and Ariosto? Which commentators had the most influence? What story, if any, was Virgil's Eclogues supposed to tell? What was the status of his Georgics? Which parts of his epic attracted the most imitators? Building on specialized scholarship of the last hundred years, this book provides a panoramic synthesis of what scholars and poets from across Europe believed they could know about Virgil's life and poetry.
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