Poets and critics read Vergil /

Spence (Univ. of Georgia) takes the core of this volume from a 1995 conference entitled "After Grief and Reason" (a title borrowed from Russian poet Joseph Brodsky's collection of essays On Grief and Reason, of which a short selection is included here, a reading of Robert Frost's "Home Burial" as a Virgilian pastoral). Among the other essays is Gian Biagio Conte's fine analysis of the Aristaeus episode in Book IV of the Georgics. He distinguishes the qualities of the didactic mode of exposition as opposed to the narrative mode of Ovid's tales and shows how Virgil produced a song that would serve the collectivity without becoming mere propaganda. Craig Kallendorf contributes an excellent commentary on the reception of Virgil in the visual arts, beginning with the most famous early printed edition of Virgil (1502). The article is richly illustrated with woodcuts and engravings. Stephen Merriam Foley offers an interesting account of the evolution of English blank verse in the Earl of Surrey's translation of Aeneid II and IV. The last two pieces are sprightly conversations, one on translating Virgil, the other on Virgil's influence on poets and scholars. Altogether, a good cross-section of modern Virgilian interpretation, especially for upper-division undergraduates and general readers. C. Fantazzi East Carolina University