Virgil in the Renaissance

The disciplines of classical scholarship were established in their modern form between 1300 and 1600, and Virgil was a test case for many of them. What became of Virgil in this period – how he was understood and how his poems were recycled – is an example of something that occurs to every classic when it outlives it original context: the words remain but their meaning becomes unsponsored. What did readers assume about Virgil in the long decades between Dante and Sidney, Petrarch and Spenser...