Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Foreword
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Translations
- Introduction
- Part I Pastoral and Georgic Modes
- Part II The Epic Mode
- 6 Virgilian Space in Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid
- 7 Virgil versus Homer: Reception, Imitation, Identity in the French Renaissance
- 8 The Aeneid in the 1530s: Reading with the Limoges Enamels
- 9 At the Helm, Second in Command: Du Bellay and La Mort de Palinure
- 10 Du Bellay's Dido and the Translation of Nation
- 11 “Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard's Franciade
- Index
- Already Published
7 - Virgil versus Homer: Reception, Imitation, Identity in the French Renaissance
from Part II - The Epic Mode
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Foreword
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Translations
- Introduction
- Part I Pastoral and Georgic Modes
- Part II The Epic Mode
- 6 Virgilian Space in Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid
- 7 Virgil versus Homer: Reception, Imitation, Identity in the French Renaissance
- 8 The Aeneid in the 1530s: Reading with the Limoges Enamels
- 9 At the Helm, Second in Command: Du Bellay and La Mort de Palinure
- 10 Du Bellay's Dido and the Translation of Nation
- 11 “Avec la terre on possède la guerre”: The Problem of Place in Ronsard's Franciade
- Index
- Already Published
Summary
Of all the poets of the ancient world, Virgil is clearly the one who survived most successfully throughout the Middle Ages, despite the competition of perhaps his closest rival, Ovid. Manuscripts of Virgil were frequent in medieval libraries, and his status as a messianic prophet, founded on the fourth Eclogue, clearly did much to enhance his reputation. Moreover, his compositions in a range of poetic genres made him an ideal model for later poets, while the propagandistic elements in his works provided material which could be exploited for patriotic purposes later on by Renaissance writers who were developing a sense of national or local identity. For centuries his position went unchallenged but, with the rediscovery of Homer, humanists developed a greater awareness of Virgil's debt to his Greek predecessor.
The works of Homer were unknown in the West throughout the Middle Ages except by reputation, and it was not until around 1353 that Petrarch finally realized his ambition of obtaining a manuscript of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even then, he was unable to read them, relying eventually on a word-for-word translation into Latin by Leontius Pilatus. It was not until the last decades of the fifteenth century, however, that the Homeric epics became known to a wider audience, thanks in part to the editio princeps of the Greek text in 1488, and also to the various Latin translations of homer that found their way into print.
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- Information
- Virgilian Identities in the French Renaissance , pp. 141 - 160Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012