Revelations by Pan and Luna: Revisiting the Reception of Virgil in the Victorian Period

Abstract

Victorian Britain received Virgil’s poetry as indispensable to understand the greatness of the Ancient period, even though he was deemed inferior to poets in the Greek tradition. Late in the 19^th Century, the rise of British Imperialism triggered a vindication of Virgil’s poetry. Thus, Alfred Lord Tennyson read Virgil as a poet committed to the Neo-Platonic principles of the Victorian culture. This reading must be revisited in view of the dialogue that Robert Browning establishes with Virgil’s poetry in his poem “Pan and Luna”, that supports a much more transgressive view of the Latin Poet.