How Selected Poems drew on The Aeneid
A documented line of influence: John Dryden demonstrably engaged Virgil’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
Relevance
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On Selected Poems’s page
- The crown of Dryden's Selected Poems is his 1697 Aeneis — Virgil's epic recast in English heroic couplets
- It was the great labor of his late career, called the pinnacle of his work as a translator
- Read the Aeneid first and you see what Dryden was wrestling into English: the original he set out to make speak
On The Aeneid’s page
- Dryden's signature labor in his late career: a complete verse translation that made Virgil "speak English"
- His 1697 Works of Virgil renders the whole Aeneid in heroic couplets — the pinnacle of his life as a translator
- It's how generations of English readers met the epic before they could read the Latin