Virgil has the edge on Shakespeare in helping students to love literature

Aeneas defeats Turnus in the climactic Book 12 of the Aeneid. Credit: Painting by Luca Giordano Students who study Virgil's Aeneid at school find it significantly more engaging than other 'high-prestige' literature, even though they only learn tiny fragments of the text, research suggests. Ultimately, if this is high-level poetry that students actually like, perhaps we ought to be finding ways to give them the chance to do it Frances Foster The finding comes from a limited study with three groups of 15 and 16-year-old state school students taking Latin GCSE, and raises the possibility that there may be a case for expanding ancient literature's use in the wider curriculum. Almost all students involved in the study claimed they enjoyed aspects of Virgil's epic - especially the fast-paced action and mythological themes - even though they had mixed feelings about the other poetry they studied at school. Ironically, students taking Latin GCSE only ever read about 100 lines of the Aeneid's 12 books, and the study suggests that despite their enthusiasm most will probably emerge with a "distorted" view of it. The students surveyed were, for example, only reading extracts from Book Nine, in which Aeneas, the eponymous hero, never actually appears. The research is reported in a newly-published collection of essays, The Aeneid and the Modern World.