Morwood, James. Virgil, a Poet in Augustan Rome. Cambridge: CUP, 2007.
Morwood's (hereafter M.) volume in the Cambridge Greece and Rome: Texts and Contexts series is one of the latest in the unabating stream of books on Virgil's verse, this time apparently aimed at an audience that will not be reading the poet's three works in toto anytime soon. For M.'s book provides a survey of the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, taking us though each work with prose translations of selected parts, short summaries of the many omitted sections, brief annotation (and illustration) relevant to the excerpted lines, and numerous discussion questions to stimulate classroom exchange. Rather than being a guide to Virgil's opera, M.'s book is a substitute for reading the originals. Something of a throwback to late antiquity, this volume embodies a disturbing move to epitomize the work of masters. . . .
Read the whole review here: http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/01/20090110.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment