Nothing in the "Aeneid "is more evident to each generation of readers than the interaction of time levels throughout the poem s structure.

Elisabeth Henry argues that the interrelation of these different levels of awareness in the narrative is a major subject of the poem. There are also national or collective memories, embodied in names or institutions, that Virgil links to the people and places of his legendary narrative. Thus, though Aeneas story is one man s storyit is also the history of a people and the enactment of the meaning of that history."

The Orpheus myth has fascinated Western culture from the sixth century B.C. to the present.

This book defines, through a survey of the European tradition of literature, art, poetry, and music, some of the philosophical and psychological implications and developments of that myth. A number of the main expressions of the Orpheus tradition are considered in detail: the Ovidian romances of the Middle Ages, the tragic love story of Renaissance opera (but not of "The Magic Flute), "and, in the earlier tradition of Orpheus as savior or shaman, the poem known as "The Testament of Orpheus" and...