Empire's Companion : Virgilian Epics from Colonial Iberoamerica

Valdivieso, Erika

University of Chicago Press（2026/06発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 288 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780226848259

Full Description

A study of how Latin poetry shaped colonial aspirations in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century South and Central America.
 
Accompanying Iberian colonizers to the Americas, Virgil's Aeneid inspired generations of colonial elites to write their own epic poems in Latin—priming imaginations for Spanish and Portuguese rule in the Americas. In Empire's Companion, Erika Valdivieso recovers this lost strain of poetry for classicists and early Americanists alike. Each chapter introduces readers to a new poem that adapts Virgil for a different geographic context. These epics, Valdivieso argues, show elites working to reshape the New World in their own image, drawing on Virgil to think about the conquest of Indigenous peoples, new ideas about the globe, and shifting power dynamics between America and Europe. A powerful corrective to prevailing ideas about the reception of Virgil in the Americas, Empire's Companion reveals the imperial potential of the Aeneid in the hands of governing elites.

Contents

List of Figures

Introduction
1. Pietas on the Shores of Brazil
2. Epic from the Edge of the Map
3. Parading the Mexica Emperors
4. America's Antiquities
Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Works Cited
Index