Virgilian Tradition: Book History and the History of Reading in Early Modern Europe

The essays in this collection approach the reception of the Roman poet Virgil in early modern Europe from the perspective of two areas at the center of current scholarly work in the humanities: book history and the history of reading. The first group of essays looks at broader questions, of traditional notions of literary practice and value, or how rhetoric helps shape literary criticism. The author then focuses on how title pages and illustrations help shape interpretation, and so the comments that early modern readers regularly entered into the margins of their books. The volume concludes with four more specialized studies that show how these larger issues play out in specific neo-Latin works of the early modern period.