Darkness Visible: A Study Of Vergil's 'aeneid'
by W. R. Johnson /
2013 / English / PDF
13 MB Download
One of the best books ever written on one of humanitys greatest epics, W. R. Johnsons classic study of Vergils Aeneid challenges centuries of received wisdom. Johnson rejects the political and historical reading of the epic as a record of the glorious prehistory of Rome and instead foregrounds Vergils enigmatic style and questioning of the heroic myths.
With an approach to the text that is both grounded in scholarship and intensely personal, and in a style both rhetorically elegant and passionate, Johnson offers readings of specific passages that are nuanced and suggestive as he focuses on the somber and nourishing fictions in Vergils poem. A timeless work of scholarship, Darkness Visible will enthrall classicists as well as students and scholars of the history of criticismspecifically the way in which politics influence modern readings of the classicsand of poetry and literature.
