R. Deryck Williams – författare

The Aeneid of Virgil is one of thegreatest works of Classical antiquity. This study by the Virgilian scholar R.Deryck Williams, first published in 1987 and long unavailable, sets the Aeneid in its historical literarybackground and shows how Virgil related his own world of the newlyestablished Roman Empire to the experience of the past. The poetic qualitiesof epic are analysed and illustrated by frequent quotations from the Latin,always with prose translations. The book will be appreciated by students andteachers of literature, and by knowledgeable non-academic readers.

This is the second volume of R. Deryck Williams' classic edition of the Aeneid, covering books VII and XII. It includes the Latin text, with English introduction, an extensive commentary and notes by this renowned Virgilian scholar. Designed for upper school and university students, the commentary interprets the poetic methods and intentions of the Aeneid, and explains not only what Virgil says, but how he says it and why he says it in the particular way which he chooses. The outstanding and long-lived ‘red Macmillan’ series of editions survived on the basis of T. E. Page’s perceptive and exemplary editions of Virgil, dating from the closing decade of the nineteenth century. In the early 1970s, replacement editions were prepared by the outstanding Virgilian scholar R.D. Williams, to take account of more modern approaches to Virgil and of the needs of new generations of upper school and university students. The scale of the edition required brevity and immediate relevance to the text but Williams achieved his aim of being ‘concise rather than omissive’ and his notes remain an example of clarity and good sense for any student approaching the second half of the Aeneid in whole or in part.

In Aeneas and the Roman Hero, the author explains and illustrates the ideals of the newly-created Roman empire under Augustus as they are reflected in Virgil’s Aeneid. National hopes were high; Rome had emerged from the bloodshed of internecine civil wars; her renewed civilisation was set to rule the known world. Virgil’s Aeneid explores and symbolises those aspirations in epic narrative through the myth of the Trojan hero Aeneas. The poem remains one of the most significant literary landmarks of our own civilisation; in this book, its story and its poetic magnificence are outlined for the student coming to the poem for the first time.This well-established series, Inside the Ancient World, presents elected aspects of the ancient world in such a way as to help students gain an understanding of the attitudes of the Greeks and Romans, and to allow them to form their own judgement on the issues raised. Designed to meet the need for material suited to Classical Studies / Classical Civilization courses, it will be found particularly useful by candidates taking examinations. It is also intended as a helpful ancillary to the study of Greek and Latin at these levels. Much of the information is given by way of translated quotations from ancient authors. the books are illustrated throughout and diagrams and maps are linked closely to the text.