9780521498852. Pre-owned: Good condition. Trade paperback. Language: English. Pages: 406. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 406 p. Contains: Unspecified Halftones. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Virgil became a school author in his own lifetime and the centre of the Western canon for the next 1800 years exerting a major influence on European literature art and politics. This Companion is designed as an indispensable guide for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of an author critical to so many disciplines. It consists of essays by seventeen scholars from Britain the USA Ireland and Italy which offer a range of different perspectives both traditional and innovative on Virgil s works and a renewed sense of why Virgil matters today. The Companion is divided into four main sections focussing on reception genre context and form. This ground-breaking book not only provides a wealth of material for an informed reading but also offers sophisticated insights which point to the shape of Virgilian scholarship and criticism to come.