In these studies of Latin poetry Niall Rudd demonstrates a variety of critical methods and approaches. He shows how it can be fruitful at different times to consider the historical background of a poem, its language or structure, its place in a literary tradition, the role of critical paradigms, and so on. But if no single approach has special and invariable authority this does not imply critical anarchy. Each has its own validity for different purposes, its own strengths and limitations. The reader must be versatile and sensitive to a range of possibilities, but not doctrinaire.

Preface; Abbreviations; 1. History: Ovid and the Augustan myth; 2. Idea: Dido's culpa; 3. Imitation: association of ideas in Persius; 4. Tone: poets and patrons in Juvenal's seventh satire; 5. Architecture: theories about Virgil's Eclogues; 6. Theory: sincerity and mask; 7. Translation; Index.