Recent scholarship on classical literature and the eighteenth century

Abstract

This article provides a survey of the scholarship on classical literature and eighteenth-century British literary culture that has appeared since 2010. Drawing on general overviews of the period, as well as more specific work on translation and classical reception, it focuses on the following five subject-areas: non-elite readers of classical literature; the status of Homeric epic; the relationship between classical literature, Celticism and the Gothic; Horatianism; georgic poetry. The article then addresses the classical authors, texts and genres from outside of these areas which have also recently received scholarly attention, and identifies further topics of enquiry which require examining to provide the fullest picture of the eighteenth century's engagement with the literature of antiquity.