Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles

Description

Investigation of the Latin poetry produced by British poets from the sixteenth century onwards affords an indispensible insight into a dominant strand in the intellectual, cultural and educational life of the British Isles during this period. At this time, the composition of Latin poetry was a regular feature of school curricula and a popular leisure-time activity of the educated elite. Such examination also sheds light on the poetic principles and practice of major British poets (such as Campion, Cowley, Herbert and Milton) who penned a large quantity of neo-Latin verse in addition to their better-known vernacular works.

Luke Houghton is Lecturer in Classics, University of Glasgow. He is co-author of Perceptions of Horace: A Roman Poet and his Readers (2009). Gesine Manuwald is Professor of Latin at University College London, UK. Her publications include, as editor, Cicero, Philippics 3-9 ( 2007); a revised edition of Cicero, Philippics (2009) and Roman Drama: A Reader (2010). Contributors: Ceri Davies, Swansea University; Roger P.H. Green, University of Glasgow; Philip Hardie, University of Cambridge; Jason Harris, University College Cork, Ireland; Stephen Harrison, University of Oxford; L.B.T. Houghton, University of Glasgow; Sarah Knight, University of Leicester; Gesine Manuwald, University College London; David Money, University of Cambridge; Victoria Moul, King's College London; Niall Rudd, University of Liverpool; Keith Sidwell, University of Calgary, Canada; Andrew Taylor, University of Cambridge; Angus Vine, University of Stirling.

Though this volume is, as the editors acknowledge, a collection of case studies rather than a comprehensive account, it nonetheless illustrates the range and vitality of British Neo-Latin in the centuries under discussion. It shows, too, that there are many discoveries still to 108 seventeenth-century news be made and many areas of British Neo-Latin which invite reassessment. That all the contributors hold or used to hold university posts in one of the countries under discussion, that there is now a British Society for Neo-Latin Studies, and that regular Neo-Latin seminars and colloquia are held at Cambridge, where courses may be taken at the undergraduate level, further exemplify the vitality of Neo-Latin studies in Great Britain and Ireland today. -- J. W. Binns * Neo-Latin News *