An Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature in British Universities

Description

Compiled by a team of experts in the field, this volume brings to view an array of Latin texts produced in British universities from c.1500 to 1700. It includes a comprehensive introduction to the production of Neo-Latin and Neo-Greek in the early modern university, the precise circumstances and broader environments that gave rise to it, plus an associated bibliography. 12 high-quality sections, each prefaced by its own short introduction, set forth the Latin (and occasionally Greek) texts and accompanying English translations and notes. Each section provides focused orientation and is arranged in such a way as to ensure the volume's accessibility to scholars and students at all levels of familiarity with Neo-Latin. Passages are taken from documents that were composed in seats of learning across the British Isles, in Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh and St Andrews, and adduce a wide range of material from orations and disputational theses to collections of occasional verse, correspondence, notebooks and university drama. This anthology as a whole conveys a sense of the extent of Latin's role in the academy and the span of remits in which it was deployed. Far from simply offering a snapshot of discrete projects, the contributions collectively offer insights into the broader culture of the early modern university over an extended period. They engage with the administrative operations of institutions, pedagogical processes and academic approaches, but also high-level disputes and the universities' relationship with the worlds of politics, new science and intellectual developments elsewhere in Europe.

Gesine Manuwald is Professor of Latin at University College London, UK, and President of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies (SNLS). She has published a number of articles on early modern Latin literature and edited the collected volume Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles (2012) with Luke Houghton. She is a co-editor of the first two anthologies in the series. Lucy Nicholas is Lecturer in Latin and Ancient Greek at The Warburg Institute in London, UK. She has published on Roger Ascham and written on other early modern Latin authors, including Thomas More, Thomas Nashe and Walter Haddon. She is also a co-editor of the first two anthologies in the series.

An excellent introduction to the volume as a whole lucidly describes the development of universities in early modern Britain. The material collected examines these important institutions through the lens of the languages - Latin, and to a lesser extent, Greek - in which they functioned, revealing the vital role universities played in public and political life. -- Elisabeth Dutton, Professor of Medieval English, University of Fribourg, Switzerland