Walking Through Elysium: Vergil's Underworld and the Poetics of Tradition(Phoenix Supplementary Volumes)

Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil's underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil's underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts. The essays in this volume speak to Vergil's incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil's underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil's underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Bill Gladhill, McGill University, and Micah Myers, Kenyon College 1. Into the Woods        Alessandro Barchiesi, New York University 2. Statius' Walking in Vergil's Footsteps      Emily Pillinger, King's College London 3. The Sibyl's Cave and Visions of the Future    Maggie Kilgour, McGill University 4. Exploring the Forests of Antiquity: The Golden Bough in Early Modern Literature     Matteo Soranzo, McGill University 5. Aeneas' Steps        Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Universidad Complutense de Madrid 6. Vergil's Underworld and the Afterlife of Love Poets    Micah Y. Myers, Kenyon College 7. Vergilian Underworlds in Ovid       Alison Keith, University of Toronto 8. Mortem aliquid ultra est: Vergil's Underworld in Senecan Tragedy     Bill Gladhill, McGill University 9. Servius on Sinners and Punishments in Vergil's Underworld  Fabio Stok, University of Rome Tor Vergata 10. Paradise and Performance in Vergil's Underworld and Horace's Carmen Saeculare Lauren Curtis, Bard College 11. Why isn't Homer in Virgil's Underworld? – and Other Notable Absences       Emily Gowers, University of Cambridge 12. The Silence of Aeneid 6 in Augustine's Confessions  Jacob L. Mackey, Occidental College 13. Spiritualism as Textual Practice     Grant Parker, Stanford University

About the Author :
Bill Gladhill is an associate professor in the Department of Classics at McGill University. Micah Y. Myers is an associate professor of classics at Kenyon College.

Review :
"Walking through Elysium deserves the attention of anyone interested in the splendor of Vergil's achievement in what some consider to be his finest product…The editors and their colleagues have succeeded in continuing the endless and enthralling walk of explicating Aeneid 6 with admirable vigor and welcome lucidity." - Lee Fratantuono, Maynooth University (CJ-Online)