Book People Archive

A book I would like to see online

Now here's a book I would like to see online somewhere:

_Vergil in the Middle Ages_
Domenico Comparetti. Tr. E. F. M. Benecke.
1872. Reprinted by Princeton University Press, 1997. 392pp.
ISBN 0691026785.

 From its first complete Italian printing in 1872 up to the present day,
Domenico Comparetti's _Vergil in the Middle Ages_ has been
acknowledged as a masterpiece, regarded by some critics as "a true
and proper history of European consciousness from antiquity to
Dante." Treating Vergil's poetry as a foundation of Latin European
identity, Comparetti seeks to give a complete history of the medieval
conception of the preeminent poet. Scholars of the time had transformed
Vergil into a sage and a seer, a type of universal philosopher--even a
Christian poet and a guide of a Christian poet. In the mid-twelfth
century, there surfaced legends that converted Vergil into a magician,
endowing him with supernatural powers. Comparetti explores the ongoing
interest in Vergil's poetry as it appeared in popular folklore and
legends as well as in medieval classical scholarship. This great
synthesizing work, which has been unavailable for over twenty years, is
now back in print, based on E.F.M. Benecke's 1895
translation of the Italian second edition.