Reflections and New Perspectives on Virgil's Georgics

Virgil's <i>Georgics</i> the most neglected of the poet's three major works is brought to life and infused with fresh meanings in this dynamic collection of new readings. The <i>Georgics</i>is shown to be a rich field of inherited and varied literary forms actively inviting a wide range of interpretations as well as deep reflection on its place within the tradition of didactic poetry.<br/> <br/>The essays contained in this volume - contributed by scholars from Australia Europe and North America - offer new approaches and interpretive methods that greatly enhance our understanding of Virgil's poem. In the process they unearth an array of literary and philosophical sources which exerted a rich influence on the <i>Georgics</i> but whose impact has hitherto been underestimated in scholarship. A second goal of the volume is to examine how the <i>Georgics</i> - with its profound meditations on humankind nature and the socio-political world of its creation - has been (re)interpreted and appropriated by readers and critics from antiquity to the modern era. The volume opens up a number of exciting new research avenues for the study of the reception of the <i>Georgics</i> by highlighting the myriad ways in which the poem has been understood by ancient readers early modern poets explorers of the 'New World' and female translators of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.