This book argues for a new attention to the importance of beauty and the aesthetic in our response to poetry. Charles Martindale explores ways in which Kant's aesthetic theory, as set out in the Critique of Judgement, remains of fundamental importance for the modern critic. He argues that the Kantian 'judgement of taste' is not formalist, and explores the relationship between the aesthetic and the political in our responses to art. Finally he urges the value of aesthetic criticism as pioneered by Walter Pater and others. The (mainly Latin) poems discussed are all translated, and the book will be of interest not only to classicists but to anyone interested in aesthetics, aestheticism, poetry, reception, comparative literature, and critical theory.