Yasmin Haskell
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262849
- eISBN:
- 9780191734588
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This is the first dedicated study of the classical-style, Latin didactic poetry produced by the Society of Jesus in the early modern period. The Jesuits were the most prolific composers of such ...
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This is the first dedicated study of the classical-style, Latin didactic poetry produced by the Society of Jesus in the early modern period. The Jesuits were the most prolific composers of such poetry, teaching all manner of arts and sciences: meteorology and magnetism, raising chickens and children, the arts of sculpture and engraving, writing and conversation, the social and medicinal benefits of coffee and chocolate, the pious life and the urbane life. The book accounts for this investment in so secular a genre by considering the Society's educational and ideological values and practices. Extensive quotation from the poems reveals their literary qualities, compositional methods, and traditions. The poems also command scholarly attention for what they reveal about social, cultural, and intellectual life in this period.Less
This is the first dedicated study of the classical-style, Latin didactic poetry produced by the Society of Jesus in the early modern period. The Jesuits were the most prolific composers of such poetry, teaching all manner of arts and sciences: meteorology and magnetism, raising chickens and children, the arts of sculpture and engraving, writing and conversation, the social and medicinal benefits of coffee and chocolate, the pious life and the urbane life. The book accounts for this investment in so secular a genre by considering the Society's educational and ideological values and practices. Extensive quotation from the poems reveals their literary qualities, compositional methods, and traditions. The poems also command scholarly attention for what they reveal about social, cultural, and intellectual life in this period.
Llewelyn Morgan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199554188
- eISBN:
- 9780191594991
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554188.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The wealth of metrical forms adopted by classical poetry is one of its characteristic features. Yet metre features only sporadically in contemporary criticism of ancient poetry. This book makes the ...
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The wealth of metrical forms adopted by classical poetry is one of its characteristic features. Yet metre features only sporadically in contemporary criticism of ancient poetry. This book makes the case that metre was central to the Roman experience of literature, and should be restored to a central position also in interpretation of that poetry. By the time Roman poets came to write hexameters, choliambics, and sapphics, these metres could all claim rich histories, and consequently brought a wealth of associations in their own right to the poems they carried. Powerful effects can be achieved by manipulation of the established characters of their metrical media: by giving the metre of classical Latin poetry its proper weight, critics can restore to that poetry a critical, neglected dimension. In four main chapters on representative metres or metre groups, this book considers how Roman poets exploited the connotations of metrical form: the ‘Catullan’ associations of the Flavian hendecasyllable; the logic that produced the ‘pure’ iambic trimeter; the sapphic stanza between Catullus, Horace, and Statius; and the various strategies attempted by poets to subvert the superlative status of the benchmark metre, the dactylic hexameter. Also considered are sotadeans, priapeans, saturnians, elegiacs, and Horace's epodic structures. Connections between poetic practice and the academic study of metre in antiquity are highlighted, and attention is also given both to Greek perceptions of the metres they bequeathed to Rome, and to the effect on Roman versification of the perception that these forms were irreducibly Greek.Less
The wealth of metrical forms adopted by classical poetry is one of its characteristic features. Yet metre features only sporadically in contemporary criticism of ancient poetry. This book makes the case that metre was central to the Roman experience of literature, and should be restored to a central position also in interpretation of that poetry. By the time Roman poets came to write hexameters, choliambics, and sapphics, these metres could all claim rich histories, and consequently brought a wealth of associations in their own right to the poems they carried. Powerful effects can be achieved by manipulation of the established characters of their metrical media: by giving the metre of classical Latin poetry its proper weight, critics can restore to that poetry a critical, neglected dimension. In four main chapters on representative metres or metre groups, this book considers how Roman poets exploited the connotations of metrical form: the ‘Catullan’ associations of the Flavian hendecasyllable; the logic that produced the ‘pure’ iambic trimeter; the sapphic stanza between Catullus, Horace, and Statius; and the various strategies attempted by poets to subvert the superlative status of the benchmark metre, the dactylic hexameter. Also considered are sotadeans, priapeans, saturnians, elegiacs, and Horace's epodic structures. Connections between poetic practice and the academic study of metre in antiquity are highlighted, and attention is also given both to Greek perceptions of the metres they bequeathed to Rome, and to the effect on Roman versification of the perception that these forms were irreducibly Greek.
Katharina Volk
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199265220
- eISBN:
- 9780191708800
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265220.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The chapter examines the Astronomica as a work of poetry. It first concerns itself with the poem's genre, tackling the question of whether a ‘didactic’ poem is actually supposed to teach anything. ...
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The chapter examines the Astronomica as a work of poetry. It first concerns itself with the poem's genre, tackling the question of whether a ‘didactic’ poem is actually supposed to teach anything. Similarly to a modern coffee-table book on cooking or gardening, an ancient didactic poem presents its subject matter in an attractive format without necessarily providing detailed instruction; the Astronomica thus aims not so much at teaching astrological practice as at conveying a general, inspiring idea of astrology. Following in the footsteps of earlier Latin authors and availing himself of the rhetoric of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, Manilius presents his poem as a work of absolute originality. He blends poetics and cosmology by maintaining that in composing the Astronomica, he is fulfilling a sacred mission, having been appointed ‘poet of the cosmos’ by the divine universe itself.Less
The chapter examines the Astronomica as a work of poetry. It first concerns itself with the poem's genre, tackling the question of whether a ‘didactic’ poem is actually supposed to teach anything. Similarly to a modern coffee-table book on cooking or gardening, an ancient didactic poem presents its subject matter in an attractive format without necessarily providing detailed instruction; the Astronomica thus aims not so much at teaching astrological practice as at conveying a general, inspiring idea of astrology. Following in the footsteps of earlier Latin authors and availing himself of the rhetoric of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, Manilius presents his poem as a work of absolute originality. He blends poetics and cosmology by maintaining that in composing the Astronomica, he is fulfilling a sacred mission, having been appointed ‘poet of the cosmos’ by the divine universe itself.
Charles Martindale
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199240401
- eISBN:
- 9780191714337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199240401.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter asks what an aesthetic criticism of Latin poetry in the 21st century may look like. There is a strong body of aesthetic criticism in English, which, while from a Kantian perspective ...
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This chapter asks what an aesthetic criticism of Latin poetry in the 21st century may look like. There is a strong body of aesthetic criticism in English, which, while from a Kantian perspective should not be regarded as an object of imitation, can be construed as exemplary. For both theory and practice, the chapter turns to Pater whose writings sought to isolate the ‘virtue’, the unique aesthetic character of artworks. It offers three short essays in this mode (on Lucretius, Ovid, and Lucan), for which nothing is claimed except that they are gestures towards a revised practice. These authors have been chosen as offering the reader the experience of a unique kind of beauty that he or she will find nowhere else. For instance, the virtue of Lucretius is located in his combined love of things, words, and ideas, and an imaginatively realized vision of the universe grounded in nature and reason.Less
This chapter asks what an aesthetic criticism of Latin poetry in the 21st century may look like. There is a strong body of aesthetic criticism in English, which, while from a Kantian perspective should not be regarded as an object of imitation, can be construed as exemplary. For both theory and practice, the chapter turns to Pater whose writings sought to isolate the ‘virtue’, the unique aesthetic character of artworks. It offers three short essays in this mode (on Lucretius, Ovid, and Lucan), for which nothing is claimed except that they are gestures towards a revised practice. These authors have been chosen as offering the reader the experience of a unique kind of beauty that he or she will find nowhere else. For instance, the virtue of Lucretius is located in his combined love of things, words, and ideas, and an imaginatively realized vision of the universe grounded in nature and reason.
Yasmin Annabel Haskell
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262849
- eISBN:
- 9780191734588
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262849.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter examines how the French Jesuits influenced the didactic poetic practice of their Italian counterparts. It discusses Niccolò ‘Parthenius’ Giannettasio, an Italian Jesuit who, in spite of ...
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This chapter examines how the French Jesuits influenced the didactic poetic practice of their Italian counterparts. It discusses Niccolò ‘Parthenius’ Giannettasio, an Italian Jesuit who, in spite of his admiration of Rapin, Fracastoro, and other French Jesuit contemporaries, opted to write Latin didactic poetry in a Neopolitan setting. The chapter also discusses Tommaso Strozzi, another Neopolitan Jesuit, who took inspiration from Girolamo Fracastoro's Syphlis. Fracastoro, who was the most famous Renaissance successor of Pontano, had a profound influence on the georgic poetry of his Tommaso, particularly his Praedium rusticum. The chapter also discusses Francesco Eulalio Savastano, a Neopolitan Jesuit didactic poet. His poems were a hybrid of French Jesuit and native Italian strains of neo-Latin georgic. Compared to Rapin and his Neopolitan colleagues, Savastano produced a didactic poem of more ambitious scientific pretensions. His Botanicorium, seu Institutionum rei herbariae libri iv sought to surpass the didactic poetry of Rapin. His Botanicorium was the harbinger of the more self-consciously difficult scientific poetry of the Jesuits working in Rome. It looks not only to Lucretius, Fracastoro, and Virgil but also to rivals such as Giannettasio and, above all, Rapin. This attempt to produce a scholarly difficult poetry was an opportunity for poetic, as well as competitive, display.Less
This chapter examines how the French Jesuits influenced the didactic poetic practice of their Italian counterparts. It discusses Niccolò ‘Parthenius’ Giannettasio, an Italian Jesuit who, in spite of his admiration of Rapin, Fracastoro, and other French Jesuit contemporaries, opted to write Latin didactic poetry in a Neopolitan setting. The chapter also discusses Tommaso Strozzi, another Neopolitan Jesuit, who took inspiration from Girolamo Fracastoro's Syphlis. Fracastoro, who was the most famous Renaissance successor of Pontano, had a profound influence on the georgic poetry of his Tommaso, particularly his Praedium rusticum. The chapter also discusses Francesco Eulalio Savastano, a Neopolitan Jesuit didactic poet. His poems were a hybrid of French Jesuit and native Italian strains of neo-Latin georgic. Compared to Rapin and his Neopolitan colleagues, Savastano produced a didactic poem of more ambitious scientific pretensions. His Botanicorium, seu Institutionum rei herbariae libri iv sought to surpass the didactic poetry of Rapin. His Botanicorium was the harbinger of the more self-consciously difficult scientific poetry of the Jesuits working in Rome. It looks not only to Lucretius, Fracastoro, and Virgil but also to rivals such as Giannettasio and, above all, Rapin. This attempt to produce a scholarly difficult poetry was an opportunity for poetic, as well as competitive, display.
Gerard O'Daly
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199263950
- eISBN:
- 9780191741364
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263950.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Prudentius is arguably the greatest Latin poet of late antiquity. This book provides the Latin text, a new English verse translation, and critical reviews on each of his twelve lyric poems, the ...
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Prudentius is arguably the greatest Latin poet of late antiquity. This book provides the Latin text, a new English verse translation, and critical reviews on each of his twelve lyric poems, the Cathemerinon, Poems for the Day, which were published early in the fifth century ad. They reflect the religious concerns of the increasingly Christianized western Roman Empire in the age of the emperor Theodosius and Ambrose of Milan, but they are above all the writings of a private person, and of the ways in which his religious beliefs colour his everyday life. Several of these poems follow the day's course, from pre-dawn to mealtime and nightfall. Others celebrate Christ's miracles, cult of the dead, and the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. They are rich in biblical themes and narratives, images and symbols. But they are written in the classical metres of Latin poetry, use its vocabulary and metaphors, and exploit its themes as much as those of the Bible. They achieve a remarkable creative tension between the two worlds that determined Prudentius' culture: the beliefs and practices, sacred books and doctrines of Christianity, and the traditions, poetry, and ideas of the Greeks and Romans. A good part of the attractiveness of these poems comes from the interplay in Prudentius' reception of these two worlds.Less
Prudentius is arguably the greatest Latin poet of late antiquity. This book provides the Latin text, a new English verse translation, and critical reviews on each of his twelve lyric poems, the Cathemerinon, Poems for the Day, which were published early in the fifth century ad. They reflect the religious concerns of the increasingly Christianized western Roman Empire in the age of the emperor Theodosius and Ambrose of Milan, but they are above all the writings of a private person, and of the ways in which his religious beliefs colour his everyday life. Several of these poems follow the day's course, from pre-dawn to mealtime and nightfall. Others celebrate Christ's miracles, cult of the dead, and the feasts of Christmas and Epiphany. They are rich in biblical themes and narratives, images and symbols. But they are written in the classical metres of Latin poetry, use its vocabulary and metaphors, and exploit its themes as much as those of the Bible. They achieve a remarkable creative tension between the two worlds that determined Prudentius' culture: the beliefs and practices, sacred books and doctrines of Christianity, and the traditions, poetry, and ideas of the Greeks and Romans. A good part of the attractiveness of these poems comes from the interplay in Prudentius' reception of these two worlds.
Jane Stevenson
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198185024
- eISBN:
- 9780191714238
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198185024.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This book addresses women's relationship to culture between the 1st century BC and the 18th century by identifying women who wrote poetry in Latin. It also considers women's prose writing in Latin ...
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This book addresses women's relationship to culture between the 1st century BC and the 18th century by identifying women who wrote poetry in Latin. It also considers women's prose writing in Latin and their performance as Latin orators. The earlier chapters move forward through time up to the Renaissance, which is then treated on a country-by-country basis, followed by a second suite of chapters on the early modern era. It surveys the phenomenon of women who achieved a position in public life at a time when this was not open to women in general, and how the societies in which this occurred permitted this to happen. It is completed by a checklist of more than 300 women Latin poets, identifying where possible their names, place, milieu, and providing details of their work and a comprehensive finding guide listing manuscripts, editions, and translations.Less
This book addresses women's relationship to culture between the 1st century BC and the 18th century by identifying women who wrote poetry in Latin. It also considers women's prose writing in Latin and their performance as Latin orators. The earlier chapters move forward through time up to the Renaissance, which is then treated on a country-by-country basis, followed by a second suite of chapters on the early modern era. It surveys the phenomenon of women who achieved a position in public life at a time when this was not open to women in general, and how the societies in which this occurred permitted this to happen. It is completed by a checklist of more than 300 women Latin poets, identifying where possible their names, place, milieu, and providing details of their work and a comprehensive finding guide listing manuscripts, editions, and translations.
Gian Biagio Conte
S. J. Harrison (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199287017
- eISBN:
- 9780191713262
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199287017.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This volume presents a collection of pieces from a celebrated world-class scholar and interpreter of Latin poetry, focusing on the interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid. It forms the sequel to two widely ...
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This volume presents a collection of pieces from a celebrated world-class scholar and interpreter of Latin poetry, focusing on the interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid. It forms the sequel to two widely influential earlier books on Virgil by the same author and translates and adds to a collection of papers published in Italian in 2002. Its central concern is the way in which Virgil reworks earlier poetry (especially that of Homer) at the most detailed level to produce very broad literary and emotional effects. Through detailed scholarly analysis, the book explores a central issue in Virgilian studies, that of how the Aeneid manages to create a new and effective mode of epic in a period when the genre appears to be debased or exhausted.Less
This volume presents a collection of pieces from a celebrated world-class scholar and interpreter of Latin poetry, focusing on the interpretation of Virgil's Aeneid. It forms the sequel to two widely influential earlier books on Virgil by the same author and translates and adds to a collection of papers published in Italian in 2002. Its central concern is the way in which Virgil reworks earlier poetry (especially that of Homer) at the most detailed level to produce very broad literary and emotional effects. Through detailed scholarly analysis, the book explores a central issue in Virgilian studies, that of how the Aeneid manages to create a new and effective mode of epic in a period when the genre appears to be debased or exhausted.
Maggie Kilgour
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199589432
- eISBN:
- 9780191738500
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199589432.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, ...
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The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.Less
The first chapter shows that Milton became familiar with Ovid at an early age through practices of translation and imitation. Noting close parallels with and specific verbal echoes of Ovid's writing, it demonstrates that the young Milton has a surprisingly keen grasp also of the broader patterns and concerns of Ovid's works. It suggests further, moreover, that Milton became increasingly attentive to revisions of Ovid by earlier writers. Beginning with some of the Ovidian elements in the early Latin works it turns to Milton's first English poem, ‘On the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough’, and ends with a discussion of his masque Comus. As he moves into English, Milton's reading of Ovid responds also to the adaptations of the Elizabethans, most notably Spenser and Shakespeare, but also the epyllion writers and Marlowe who are especially drawn to the stories of Daphne and Venus and Adonis.
Martin L. McLaughlin
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158998
- eISBN:
- 9780191673443
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158998.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The importance of Cristoforo Landino (1424–98) in the literary history of the Quattrocento has recently been reassessed, notably by Cardini and Field. Both in general terms and particularly in his ...
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The importance of Cristoforo Landino (1424–98) in the literary history of the Quattrocento has recently been reassessed, notably by Cardini and Field. Both in general terms and particularly in his views on literary imitation, Landino acts as the main link between Alberti and the circle of Poliziano and Lorenzo. This chapter offers a comprehensive picture of his critical ideas considering three different areas of his activity: first, his own Latin poetry and his critique of Latin verse in general; second, his Latin dialogues and his views on Latin prose; and, third, his thoughts on literature in the vernacular. Landino makes a more significant contribution to the vernacular than to Latin. He is interested initially in injecting Petrarchan motifs into the Latin love lyric, but eventually reverses the process to evolve a programme of transferimento from the classical to the vernacular tradition which is the opposite of that early contaminatio.Less
The importance of Cristoforo Landino (1424–98) in the literary history of the Quattrocento has recently been reassessed, notably by Cardini and Field. Both in general terms and particularly in his views on literary imitation, Landino acts as the main link between Alberti and the circle of Poliziano and Lorenzo. This chapter offers a comprehensive picture of his critical ideas considering three different areas of his activity: first, his own Latin poetry and his critique of Latin verse in general; second, his Latin dialogues and his views on Latin prose; and, third, his thoughts on literature in the vernacular. Landino makes a more significant contribution to the vernacular than to Latin. He is interested initially in injecting Petrarchan motifs into the Latin love lyric, but eventually reverses the process to evolve a programme of transferimento from the classical to the vernacular tradition which is the opposite of that early contaminatio.
Aaron Pelttari
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452765
- eISBN:
- 9780801455001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452765.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This concluding chapter summarizes key themes. This book examines how the figure of the reader lends a sense of coherence and meaning to the Latin poetry from late antiquity. It shows that in the ...
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This concluding chapter summarizes key themes. This book examines how the figure of the reader lends a sense of coherence and meaning to the Latin poetry from late antiquity. It shows that in the long fourth century, Latin poets explored the interaction between text, meaning, and interpretation, and the most distinctive forms of late antique poetry reflect upon this interplay between source and reading. As the reader came to play a central role in mediating the presence of the text, the poetics of late antiquity stand out in high relief against the classicisms of Augustan Rome. The “presence of the text” consists in the sense that the poem remains to be heard, interpreted, and lived in the particular moment at which it is encountered by the reader. The remainder of the chapter presents some directions for future study.Less
This concluding chapter summarizes key themes. This book examines how the figure of the reader lends a sense of coherence and meaning to the Latin poetry from late antiquity. It shows that in the long fourth century, Latin poets explored the interaction between text, meaning, and interpretation, and the most distinctive forms of late antique poetry reflect upon this interplay between source and reading. As the reader came to play a central role in mediating the presence of the text, the poetics of late antiquity stand out in high relief against the classicisms of Augustan Rome. The “presence of the text” consists in the sense that the poem remains to be heard, interpreted, and lived in the particular moment at which it is encountered by the reader. The remainder of the chapter presents some directions for future study.
Cathy Shrank
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199268887
- eISBN:
- 9780191708473
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268887.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines how the antiquarian Leland responded to the pressures placed upon English identities by Henry VIII's split with Rome, when the centres of learning (the monasteries) were being ...
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This chapter examines how the antiquarian Leland responded to the pressures placed upon English identities by Henry VIII's split with Rome, when the centres of learning (the monasteries) were being dissolved. It shows how Leland uses his humanist learning to fashion a ‘new’ English history, which presented England as a land with a long tradition of justified resistance to papal authority, and also to refute England's reputation for barbarity by depicting his country as a place of scholarship and of literary and artistic accomplishment. The chapter looks at Leland's topographical writings (both his prose notes in manuscript and printed neo-Latin poetry) and the (sometimes strained) endeavours within these to portray a strong, cohesive island-nation. It also explores his attempted literary history of this island, in which he takes advantage of the slippage between the terms ‘England/English’ and ‘Britain/British’. During the chapter, Leland is compared and contrasted with his friend and contemporary, John Bale.Less
This chapter examines how the antiquarian Leland responded to the pressures placed upon English identities by Henry VIII's split with Rome, when the centres of learning (the monasteries) were being dissolved. It shows how Leland uses his humanist learning to fashion a ‘new’ English history, which presented England as a land with a long tradition of justified resistance to papal authority, and also to refute England's reputation for barbarity by depicting his country as a place of scholarship and of literary and artistic accomplishment. The chapter looks at Leland's topographical writings (both his prose notes in manuscript and printed neo-Latin poetry) and the (sometimes strained) endeavours within these to portray a strong, cohesive island-nation. It also explores his attempted literary history of this island, in which he takes advantage of the slippage between the terms ‘England/English’ and ‘Britain/British’. During the chapter, Leland is compared and contrasted with his friend and contemporary, John Bale.
Anthony Corbeill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691163222
- eISBN:
- 9781400852468
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691163222.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), ...
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From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). This book surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and human hermaphrodites. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, the book examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as “dust” (pulvis) or “tree bark” (cortex). The book then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. It looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. The book shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories.Less
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). This book surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and human hermaphrodites. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, the book examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as “dust” (pulvis) or “tree bark” (cortex). The book then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. It looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. The book shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories.
Katharina Volk
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199265220
- eISBN:
- 9780191708800
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265220.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This book describes the Latin astrological poet Marcus Manilius. Manilius, about whose life nothing is known, composed his didactic poem Astronomica in the second decade of the 1st century AD. The ...
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This book describes the Latin astrological poet Marcus Manilius. Manilius, about whose life nothing is known, composed his didactic poem Astronomica in the second decade of the 1st century AD. The work is our earliest extant comprehensive treatment of astrology, a discipline developed in Hellenistic Greece under the influence of Near Eastern practices that had become highly fashionable in Rome during the final years of the Republic. Apparently without much impact in his own lifetime and the rest of antiquity, Manilius was rediscovered in the Renaissance and has received numerous editions over the centuries, including by such influential critics as Joseph Scaliger, Richard Bentley, and A. E. Housman. In recent times, however, his work has been largely neglected by classical scholarship. This book explores the manifold intellectual traditions that have gone into shaping the Astronomica: ancient astronomy and cosmology, the history and practice of astrology, the historical and political situation at the poem's composition, the poetic and generic conventions that inform it, and the philosophical underpinnings of Manilius' world-view. What emerges is a panoroma of the cultural imagination of the Early Empire, a fascinating picture of the ways in which educated Greeks and Romans were accustomed to think and speak about the cosmos and man's place in it.Less
This book describes the Latin astrological poet Marcus Manilius. Manilius, about whose life nothing is known, composed his didactic poem Astronomica in the second decade of the 1st century AD. The work is our earliest extant comprehensive treatment of astrology, a discipline developed in Hellenistic Greece under the influence of Near Eastern practices that had become highly fashionable in Rome during the final years of the Republic. Apparently without much impact in his own lifetime and the rest of antiquity, Manilius was rediscovered in the Renaissance and has received numerous editions over the centuries, including by such influential critics as Joseph Scaliger, Richard Bentley, and A. E. Housman. In recent times, however, his work has been largely neglected by classical scholarship. This book explores the manifold intellectual traditions that have gone into shaping the Astronomica: ancient astronomy and cosmology, the history and practice of astrology, the historical and political situation at the poem's composition, the poetic and generic conventions that inform it, and the philosophical underpinnings of Manilius' world-view. What emerges is a panoroma of the cultural imagination of the Early Empire, a fascinating picture of the ways in which educated Greeks and Romans were accustomed to think and speak about the cosmos and man's place in it.
David West
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199558681
- eISBN:
- 9780191720888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558681.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
‘There's a certain ... if anyone here will wish to know ... madam. Her name is Mrs Thirsty’. Comic scripts need a comic to perform them. Read silently they are dead. For this opening to Amores 1.8 ...
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‘There's a certain ... if anyone here will wish to know ... madam. Her name is Mrs Thirsty’. Comic scripts need a comic to perform them. Read silently they are dead. For this opening to Amores 1.8 the epexegete has to imagine a brilliant performer carrying it off: his timing, gesture, pitch and pace of voice, play of features (leer? or frown?), pregnant pause while the listeners realize they are being mocked. Ovid was a brilliant performer. It was a great sorrow to him in exile that if he were to recite his poems, nobody would understand him (Tristia 3.14.39-40). Composing a poem which you can't read to anyone is the same thing as performing rhythmic gestures in the dark (Pont. 4.2.33). This chapter attempts to imagine Ovid's recitation of Amores 1.1-6 to track the flight of the performing flea of Latin poetry: risisse Cupido dicitur.Less
‘There's a certain ... if anyone here will wish to know ... madam. Her name is Mrs Thirsty’. Comic scripts need a comic to perform them. Read silently they are dead. For this opening to Amores 1.8 the epexegete has to imagine a brilliant performer carrying it off: his timing, gesture, pitch and pace of voice, play of features (leer? or frown?), pregnant pause while the listeners realize they are being mocked. Ovid was a brilliant performer. It was a great sorrow to him in exile that if he were to recite his poems, nobody would understand him (Tristia 3.14.39-40). Composing a poem which you can't read to anyone is the same thing as performing rhythmic gestures in the dark (Pont. 4.2.33). This chapter attempts to imagine Ovid's recitation of Amores 1.1-6 to track the flight of the performing flea of Latin poetry: risisse Cupido dicitur.
G. O. Hutchinson
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263327
- eISBN:
- 9780191734168
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263327.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter presents a line from Pope’s An Essay on Man. It specifically reuses the spider that ‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line’ as an image to introduce a way of looking at the ...
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This chapter presents a line from Pope’s An Essay on Man. It specifically reuses the spider that ‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line’ as an image to introduce a way of looking at the writing in Cicero’s oratory. The chapter also focuses on one speech, the Pro S. Roscio, which receives an unusual amount of comment in Cicero’s work from the forties. The discussion of passages may show, perhaps more than has been done before, how much is involved in reading Cicero. The greatest hope is that it may encourage people to read Cicero with no less intensity and sophistication than Latin poetry.Less
This chapter presents a line from Pope’s An Essay on Man. It specifically reuses the spider that ‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line’ as an image to introduce a way of looking at the writing in Cicero’s oratory. The chapter also focuses on one speech, the Pro S. Roscio, which receives an unusual amount of comment in Cicero’s work from the forties. The discussion of passages may show, perhaps more than has been done before, how much is involved in reading Cicero. The greatest hope is that it may encourage people to read Cicero with no less intensity and sophistication than Latin poetry.
Aaron Pelttari
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452765
- eISBN:
- 9780801455001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452765.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter uses Gérard Genette's idea of the paratext to interrogate the development of prefaces to Latin poetry. It shows that the prefaces of Claudian and Prudentius are distinct from earlier ...
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This chapter uses Gérard Genette's idea of the paratext to interrogate the development of prefaces to Latin poetry. It shows that the prefaces of Claudian and Prudentius are distinct from earlier poetic forms, and addresses the prose prefaces of Ausonius in terms of the poet's construction and imagined reception of his work. Because a paratext stands apart from the work, it allows the author a space in which to read his own poem. In this way, prefaces allow poets to enact for their readers one possible approach to the text. Claudian, Prudentius, and Ausonius use their prefaces to invite, to interrogate, or sometimes even to ward off the reader's influence over their text.Less
This chapter uses Gérard Genette's idea of the paratext to interrogate the development of prefaces to Latin poetry. It shows that the prefaces of Claudian and Prudentius are distinct from earlier poetic forms, and addresses the prose prefaces of Ausonius in terms of the poet's construction and imagined reception of his work. Because a paratext stands apart from the work, it allows the author a space in which to read his own poem. In this way, prefaces allow poets to enact for their readers one possible approach to the text. Claudian, Prudentius, and Ausonius use their prefaces to invite, to interrogate, or sometimes even to ward off the reader's influence over their text.
Christina S. Kraus, John Marincola, and Christopher Pelling (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199558681
- eISBN:
- 9780191720888
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199558681.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This volume collects essays written by colleagues and friends as a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia. These essays, like Woodman's own work, cover ...
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This volume collects essays written by colleagues and friends as a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia. These essays, like Woodman's own work, cover topics in Latin poetry, oratory, and Greek and Roman historiography. Recurrent themes are the importance of rhetoric and rhetorical training, the skilful use of language and recurrent motifs in narrative, the use and adaptation of topoi, the importance of intertextuality, and the subtle and varied ways in which literary texts can have a contemporary resonance for their own day.Less
This volume collects essays written by colleagues and friends as a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Latin at the University of Virginia. These essays, like Woodman's own work, cover topics in Latin poetry, oratory, and Greek and Roman historiography. Recurrent themes are the importance of rhetoric and rhetorical training, the skilful use of language and recurrent motifs in narrative, the use and adaptation of topoi, the importance of intertextuality, and the subtle and varied ways in which literary texts can have a contemporary resonance for their own day.
Niall Rudd
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781904675488
- eISBN:
- 9781781385043
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781904675488.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This collection aims to bring out the continuity between major poets in Latin and English, presenting to a wider audience papers previously published only in academic periodicals along with a number ...
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This collection aims to bring out the continuity between major poets in Latin and English, presenting to a wider audience papers previously published only in academic periodicals along with a number of unpublished pieces. It contains essays on Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Juvenal, which are intended for the reader with a genuine but not necessarily specialised interest in Latin poetry. Corresponding papers on English poets, including Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift and Tennyson, emphasise the debt owed to their Roman predecessors. Two more general pieces, on the poetry of romantic love and on classical humanism, further underline the continuity between past and present. It is a collection of essays written over a period of time (1996-2000), some previously published, but collected here for the first time with some new piecesLess
This collection aims to bring out the continuity between major poets in Latin and English, presenting to a wider audience papers previously published only in academic periodicals along with a number of unpublished pieces. It contains essays on Virgil, Horace, Ovid and Juvenal, which are intended for the reader with a genuine but not necessarily specialised interest in Latin poetry. Corresponding papers on English poets, including Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift and Tennyson, emphasise the debt owed to their Roman predecessors. Two more general pieces, on the poetry of romantic love and on classical humanism, further underline the continuity between past and present. It is a collection of essays written over a period of time (1996-2000), some previously published, but collected here for the first time with some new pieces
Gian Biagio Conte and S. J. Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199287017
- eISBN:
- 9780191713262
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199287017.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter discusses proems, a notable term to the grammar of classical literary scholarship. It traces the development of the poetic proem from plot-summary to programme, and stresses how ...
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This chapter discusses proems, a notable term to the grammar of classical literary scholarship. It traces the development of the poetic proem from plot-summary to programme, and stresses how programmatic restarts are found at the beginning of the second half of many poetic works and books, both in Virgil and elsewhere like Lucretius and Horace. This is a key tool in the analysis of Latin and other poetry. At the border between fully poetic speech and speech still outside of poetry, the proem — the preliminary announcement of a poem which follows — is already song and is not yet song. Side by side with the thematic proem exists the programmatic proem. A programmatic proem is often found interwoven with and superimposed on the thematic proem. These two forms of proem are functionally opposed, wherein one is concerned with what will be said, and the other with how poetry will be made.Less
This chapter discusses proems, a notable term to the grammar of classical literary scholarship. It traces the development of the poetic proem from plot-summary to programme, and stresses how programmatic restarts are found at the beginning of the second half of many poetic works and books, both in Virgil and elsewhere like Lucretius and Horace. This is a key tool in the analysis of Latin and other poetry. At the border between fully poetic speech and speech still outside of poetry, the proem — the preliminary announcement of a poem which follows — is already song and is not yet song. Side by side with the thematic proem exists the programmatic proem. A programmatic proem is often found interwoven with and superimposed on the thematic proem. These two forms of proem are functionally opposed, wherein one is concerned with what will be said, and the other with how poetry will be made.
