ABSTRACT
This chapter historicizes Christopher Pearse Cranch's translation of the Aeneid by considering its publication in the aftermath of the US Civil War. Drawing on Joshua Matthews's argument that Longfellow's Divine Comedy should be understood as a wartime expression of a divided nation seeking unity, it argues that Cranch's Aeneid similarly celebrates national union and offers hope to a shaken American political state. The chapter examines Vergil’s evolving reputation in 19th-century America. What, after all, would Americans have thought of the Aeneid—both in Latin and in English? It looks at the life and career of Cranch, a remarkably versatile intellectual too often dismissed as merely a minor Transcendentalist. The chapter analyzes several passages in Cranch’s translation to suggest how his text would have resonated for American readers in 1872. An 1897 “Students’ Edition” of Cranch’s Aeneid translation added an anonymously authored introduction characterizing Vergil as “the most national as well as the greatest of Roman poets” and as a “patriotic singer”.
