Hailed in his lifetime and in every generation thereafter as the supreme Roman poet, Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE), otherwise known as Virgil, wrote three books of hexameter verse that defined the 'golden age' of Latin poetry. Virgil, as Alison Keith shows, has never gone out of critical or popular fashion. His ascent from the lesser genre of pastoral (the Bucolics) through a more ambitious didactic mode (the Georgics) to the soaring heights of epic (the incomparable Aeneid) inspired countless other authors, starting with his younger contemporary Ovid and continuing through the medieval writers Dante and Petrarch and the early modern poets Spenser and Milton. This wide-ranging introduction appraises a figure of central importance in the history of Western music, art and literature. Offering close readings of the Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid, Keith places Virgil and his poetry in historical context before tracing their impact at key moments in the culture of the West. Emphasis is placed on reception, and on how Virgil has attracted modern interest from writers as diverse as T S Eliot and Ursula K Le Guin.
