Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: the quest for the American Aeneas
  • Translatio cultus
  • Edward Taylor's classicism
  • Cotton Mather's epic in prose
  • Surge for cultural independence: the flourishing of American classicism
  • George Washington and the Vergilian moment
  • The American epic writ large: the example of Phillis Wheatley
  • The radical shift in discourse
  • The persistence of the American Aeneas in Hawthorne
  • The persistence of the American Aeneas in Melville
  • Conclusion: America's classical origins besieged
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index.