A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
Bilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England

The first account of the bilingualism of English poetic culture from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth century.

Victoria Moul (Author)

9781107192713, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 July 2022

450 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.7 cm, 1 kg

'Here are poems that time has forgotten, even whole authors who have slipped out of view. Victoria Moul is an ideal guide to this world of lost literature: erudite, obviously, but also radiant with wonder. She writes with undisguised relish and her translations make you want to read more.' David Wilson-Okamura, East Carolina University

Victoria Moul's groundbreaking study uncovers one of the most important features of early modern English poetry: its bilingualism. The first guide to a forgotten literary landscape, this book considers the vast quantities of poetry that were written and read in both Latin and English from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Introducing readers to a host of new authors and drawing on hundreds of manuscript as well as print sources, it also reinterprets a series of landmarks in English poetry within a bilingual literary context. Ranging from Tottel's miscellany to the hymns of Isaac Watts, via Shakespeare, Jonson, Herbert, Marvell, Milton and Cowley, this revelatory survey shows how the forms and fashions of contemporary Latin verse informed key developments in English poetry. As the complex, highly creative interactions between the two languages are revealed, the work reshapes our understanding of what 'English' literary history means.

Introduction
Shorter verse: 1. Anglo-Latin 'Moralising Lyric' in Early Modern England
2. Metrical variety and the development of Latin lyric poetry in the latter sixteenth century
3. Buchanan, Beza and the genre of the Sidney Psalter
4. Formal panegyric lyric in England, 1550-1650
5. Abraham Cowley and formal innovation: verse sequences, inset lyrics, Pindarics and free verse
6. Religious and devotional epigram and lyric
7. Epigram culture and literary bilingualism in early modern England
8. Satire, invective and humourous verse
Longer verse: 9. Panegyric Epic in Early Modern England
10. Latin style and late Elizabethan poetry: rethinking epylli
11. Palingenian epic: allegory, ambition, and didacticism
Afterword.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Language: history & general works [CBX]