Empire''s Companion - Virgilian Epics From Colonial Iberoamerica

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, new ideas about the globe, and 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.

About the author

Erika Valdivieso is assistant professor of classics and a member of the Early Modern Studies Program at Yale University.

Product details

• Authors: Erika Valdivieso, Erika Valdivieso, Professor Erika Valdivieso
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 22.05.2026
• EAN: 9780226848259
• ISBN: 978-0-226-84825-9
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Europe, ART / Conceptual, History of Art, Romanticism, Teaching of a specific subject, Art & design styles: Romanticism, Educational: Mathematics & numeracy, Art & Design Styles: Conceptual Art, Conceptualism, Educational: Mathematics and numeracy, EDUCATION / Teaching / Subjects / Mathematics, ART / Movements / Romanticism