Born in 70 BCE, the Roman poet Vergil came of age during a period of literary experimentalism among Latin authors. These authors introduced new Greek verse forms and metres into the existing repertoire of Latin poetic genres and measures, foremost among them being elegy, a genre that the ancients thought originated in funeral lament, but which in classical Rome became first-person poetry about the poet-lovers amatory vicissitudes. Despite the influence of notable elegists on Vergils early poetry, his critics have rarely paid attention to his engagement with the genre across his body of work.

This collection is devoted to an exploration of Vergils multifaceted relations with elegy. Contributors shed light on Vergils interactions with the genre and its practitioners across classical, medieval, and early modern periods. The book investigates Vergils hexameter poetry in relation to contemporary Latin elegy by Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and the subsequent reception of Vergils radical combination of epic with elegy by later Latin and Italian authors. Filling a striking gap in the scholarship, Vergil and Elegy illuminates the famous poets wide-ranging engagement with the genre of elegy across his oeuvre.