Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

General readers may well be confused & misled by the introduction to this book, which indulges in what is known as "reception theory": according to this theory, Virgil's reception by readers through the ages has been marked by partiality & bias, which the present editor sets out to expose. He forgets that he, too, is a reader with an outlook rooted in a specific (our own) time. His own limitations as a reader become apparent when he produces a confused & reductive essay on Virgil's first major work, The Book of Bucolics (also known as eclogues) -- a source for the tradition of pastoral poetry in the West. Other scholars will no doubt find other essays to praise or blame in such a wide range, but no one, I think, will admire the theoretical posturing & self-involvement of the editorial frame. Those wishing a fuller discussion of issues raised by this book may reach me at the appended address.

This so-called Companion to Virgil offers little to students of the poet, and certainly nothing to general or curious readers. Very plainly, this volume is completely animated with theory--theories which are neither just to Virgil nor compatible to the Virgilian tradition. This "companion" is ultra-modern in approach, so it is anachronistic in effect. Virgil, his devotees, his commentators, his imitators, and his worthy translators, would not comprehend, nor desire to comprehend, the methods strewn through the pages of this volume. Read Virgil in isolation from this book, and with the reverence that is his due; and if this is not sufficient, then seek the guidance of the ancients or that of their successors, the Humanists.