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In the long eighteenth century, dramatists and poets use Dido in two specific ways that are different from the traditional Ovidian and Virgilian versions: they either emphasize her sexuality to show her death as the consequence of yielding to temptation, or they depict her as silly and comic, minimizing her tragedy. This article argues that both versions blame Dido for her own downfall and death in order to exonerate Aeneas and make him a more acceptable and heroic model for the founder of a nation. By examining the rewriting of Dido in the long eighteenth century, this article suggests that English writers were reimagining a key classical myth both to simplify the moral message of the story and to suit their own changing national identity by providing a clear-cut model for an imperial, expansionist ruler in Aeneas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of British author Christopher Marlowe's play "Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage," its relation to ancient Roman writer Virgil's epic poem "Aeneid," and the theory of catharsis in Aristotle's "Poetics." The author contends that Marlowe's work uses the concept of catharsis from "Poetics" as it was being discussed in the sixteenth century in England.

The article examines the iconography of Henry Hoare's garden at Stourhead in England. The paper explores how the eighteenth-century mind interpreted the Stourhead to "Aenied." It also focuses on a supposed sequence of Virgilian allusions in a circuit walk that has led to the suppression of the clear visual counterpoint between the classical scenes within the garden and the Christian and Gothic images without. The author believed that the misinterpretation of Virgil and restriction of the range of association have limited and distorted the iconographical structure.