Aeneas

Aeneas is a tragic figure whose defining virtue depends on a past that has been stripped from him and whose destiny blocks him from the knowledge of the future. He is a hero of the Trojan War and a literary character created in response to political chaos and civil strife. Lee T. Pearcy's book creates an Aeneas for our time, an age of liquid modernity, when identities seem fungible and precarious.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 236 pages
Publication date: 19 July 2021
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Aeneas, the central character of Vergil's Aeneid, has been a subject of debate and interpretation for centuries. To some, he is unlikable and unreal, while to others, he is a tragic figure whose defining virtue depends on a past that has been stripped from him. His choices, silences, tears, and anger reflect an existential struggle that ultimately leads to his loss. Aeneas is a hero of the Trojan War, a time as distant from Vergil as Vergil is from us, but he is also a literary character created in response to political chaos and civil strife as the Roman Republic gave way to the Augustan empire. Lee T. Pearcy's book creates an Aeneas for our time: an age of liquid modernity, when identities seem fungible and precarious, amid a moment of political conflict and collapsing institutions. This volume offers new translations and close readings of important passages, and it restores Aeneas to the center of Rome's most important poem.

Weight: 336g
Dimension: 153 x 230 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472054909