Empire's Companion: Virgilian Epics from Colonial Iberoamerica (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226848266)

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, to form new ideas about the globe, and to consider the 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.

Author: Erika Valdivieso
ISBN-10: 0226848264
ISBN-13: 9780226848266
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 07/02/2026
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.65d