Preposterous Virgil: Reading through Stoppard, Auden, Wordsworth, Heaney

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This study in reception develops close readings of English literature as means of interrogating Virgils texts. Through four case studies, bookended by wide-ranging introductory and concluding chapters, this book shows how interpreting the Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid through modern responses can serve to focus on aspects of Virgil that would otherwise be differently perceived or else escape notice altogether. Juan Christian Pellicer probes our perceptions of the three Virgilian genres (pastoral, georgic, and epic) and analyzes the ways in which modern reconfigurations of these genres can inform our readings of Virgils works, as well as help us realize how our own ideas about Virgil reflect the literary receptions through which we approach his texts.

This book offers a practical demonstration of classical reception and its value as a critical procedure. By testing the value of modern responses to Virgil as means by which to read his texts, Pellicer critically examines a central tenet of reception studies of classical authors, namely that our understanding of their work can benefit from the receptions through which we perceive them. The reader will find Virgils texts reconfigured in challenging new ways and will find new appreciations of the classical traditions that inform key texts in the English canon.

Reviews

Pellicers questioning attentiveness and imaginative judgements do, indeed, result, as his final sentence hopes for this book, in reading as a pleasure in all its dimensions. * The Classical Review *
This is a book to read and re-read, which will deliver fresh revelations at each re-encounter. * Translation and Literature *
Reading backwards through time from modern to ancient, Juan Christian Pellicer gives us extraordinarily sensitive readings of Wordsworth and Auden, Stoppard and Heaney, which in turn sensitize us to subtleties in Virgils poetry. Preposterous Virgil is not only a contribution to our understanding of classical and English literature, but an elegant demonstration of their interdependence and mutual illumination. -- John Talbot, Associate Professor of English, Brigham Young University, USA

Author Bio

Juan Christian Pellicer is Professor of English at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published numerous articles and chapters on classical reception, the literary traditions of pastoral and georgic, and eighteenth-century English poetry.