Dubbed 'the English Virgil' in his own lifetime, Spenser has been
compared to the Augustan laureate ever since. He invited the comparison,
expecting a readership intimately familiar with Virgil's works to notice
and interpret his rich web of allusion and imitation, but also his
significant departures and transformations.This volume considers
Spenser's pastoral poetry, the genre which announces the inception of a
Virgilian career in The Shepheardes Calender, and to which he returns
in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, throwing the 'Virgilian career' into
reverse. His sustained dialogue with Virgil's Eclogues bewrays at once
a profound debt to Virgil and a deep-seated unease with his values and
priorities, not least his subordination of pastoral to epic. Drawing on
the commentary tradition and engaging with current critical debates,
this study of Spenser's interpretation, imitation and revision of Virgil
casts new light on both poets-and on the genre of pastoral itself.