Walking through Elysium

Vergil's Underworld and the Poetics of Tradition

By: Bill Gladhill (Editor), Micah Y. Myers (Editor)

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Hardcover | 6 April 2020

At a Glance

Hardcover
320 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.4 x 15.8 x 2.4

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$204.75

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Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil's underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil's underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts.

The essays in this volume speak to Vergil's incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil's underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil's underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.

Industry Reviews

Book 6 is arguably the most richly productive of later interpretations and rewritings, coming at the centre of a poem which is foundational for much western literature and culture, both in the pagan and Christian worlds. Walking through Elysium will attract a wide range of classicists and students of post-classical literature.

- Philip Hardie, Trinity College, Cambridge

The specific focus on Aeneid 6 gives Walking through Elysium a powerful and consistent core, and allows for a wide array of scenarios of reception.

- Richard Armstrong, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, University of Houston

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