The study offers a review of the numerous places and ways in which the “big book” by Beppe Fenoglio (reconstructed, with good approximation, in the recent «Libro di Johnny», edited by G. Pedullà, Turin, Einaudi, 2015) appears to carry on a specific intertextual dialogue with the «Aeneid», in respect of large as well as small structures and also, to a more limited extent, from the point of view of style and language. Moreover, in the wake of the past and recent critical debate, the nature of the textual findings allows to verify how the Virgilian model informs the narration of Fenoglio according to the patterns of a specific epic typology, in which the call of the sublime is reconciled with the necessity of adhering to history.
