Virgil:Critical Assessments collects eighty-four of the most important articles on Virgil published in the last hundred years, many of which remain the starting-points for modern scholarship and criticism. The set gathers together articles from a wide range of journals in English, as well as from the German and Italian traditions of Virgil studies, some in new translations, which would not otherwise be available.
The selections are arranged under the following headings:
* general articles, including a discussion of the influence of Lucretius' poetry on the Virgilian corpus
* the Eclogues, containing critical interpretations of all ten of Virgil's bucolic poems, an exploration of the Greek sources and a discussion of the complex poetic structure of the Eclogues
* the Georgics, incorporating an examination of the agricultural methods detailed in the poem, an exploration of the Augustan and Roman themes implicit in the poem and critical interpretations of all four books
* the Aeneid, featuring a discussion of the similarities between Virgil's Aeneas and Homer's Achilles, an exploration of the epic genre and crucial recurring themes in the Aeneid, an examination of Virgilian similes and a study of the Homeric allusions of the poem.
In volumes II-IV general studies on the works are followed by items on the individual poems and books.