Finding Patria and Pietas in Leeds: Tony Harrison and Virgil’s Aeneid.

Since his translation of Aeschylus's Oresteia, produced at the National Theatre in 1981, Tony Harrison has been closely associated with ancient Greek literature, especially that of the dramatic poets. And while his work since the 1980s has often drawn on fifth-century BC Athenian drama, his training as a Classicist is steeped in Latin poetry, particularly that of Virgil. Little has been written, however, about the place of Virgil or Latin poetry more broadly, in Harrison's poetic imagination. This is largely because of the relative paucity of works by Harrison which explicitly engage with Latin poetry. This paper will argue, however, that there is as much to learn from the absence of explicit engagement as there is to learn from the works that do engage with the Latin poetic tradition, particularly when it comes to the influence of Virgil's Aeneid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]