This study traces Virgil's journey through twentieth-century France by examining his profile in the works of Gide, Aragon, ValEry, Pagnol, Klossowski, Butor, Simon and Pinget, and by looking at how their Virgilian appropriations complement and modify current readings of the Aeneid and other works. His presence in these works provides insights not only into modern French culture but into the Virgilian oeuvre itself. This process of mutual illumination is highlighted in Cox's argument by theories of intertextuality and dialogism. Although Virgil's presence in French literature is characterized...

The history of Virgil and his receptions is long and varied. His twentieth-century career transformed his appearance as an anaemic imitator of Homer into the 'Father of the West', speaking above all for the marginalized and exiled. At the turn of the millennium it is women writers who, having been largely absent from the story of Virgil's reception, are for the first time shaping a new aetas Vergiliana by drawing on his poems to speak of their own preoccupations and concerns. Through an analysis of Virgil's presence in the work of contemporary women writers from North America (Joyce Carol...

In a series of case studies of prominent female authors - from Ali Smith and Marina Warner to Alice Oswald and Yoko Tawada - this volume examines the figure of Ovid who emerges from the hands of contemporary women writers and explores the intersections between his imaginative universe and the political and aesthetic agenda of third-wave feminism.