This wide-ranging collection of essays, written in honor of J.B. Trapp, looks at some of the central problems in the interpretation of post-classical Latin poetry. Through a variety of critical approaches, an international team of experts explores the issues of imitation and originality in Latin poetry from late Antiquity to the High Renaissance, demonstrating the richness and subtlety of the classical tradition and its literary exponents.
Sannazaro (1456-1530) is most famous for having written the first pastoral romance in European literature, the Arcadia (1504). But after this work, he devoted himself entirely to Latin poetry modeled on his beloved Virgil. In addition to his epic The Virgin Birth (1526), he also composed Piscatory Eclogues, an adaption of the eclogue form.
Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance and a leading figure in the Florence during the Age of the Medici. This I Tatti edition contains all of his Greek and Latin poetry (with the exception of the Silvae in ITRL 14) translated into English for the first time.
After centuries of near silence, Latin poetry underwent a renaissance in the late fourth and fifth centuries CE evidenced in the works of key figures such as Ausonius, Claudian, Prudentius, and Paulinus of Nola. This period of resurgence marked a milestone in the reception of the classics of late Republican and early imperial poetry. In Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique Latin Poetry, Philip Hardie explores the ways in which poets writing on non-Christian and Christian subjects used the classical traditions of Latin poetry to construct their relationship with Rome’s imperial past and present, and with the by now not-so-new belief system of the state religion, Christianity. The book pays particular attention to the themes of concord and discord, the "cosmic sense" of late antiquity, novelty and renouatio, paradox and miracle, and allegory. It is also a contribution to the ongoing discussion of whether there is an identifiably late antique poetics and a late antique practice of intertextuality. Not since Michael Robert's classic The Jeweled Style has a single book had so much to teach about the enduring power of Latin poetry in late antiquity.
In Latin Poetry, the erudite and playful works of one of Italy's greatest poets, Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), are translated into English for the first time. This I Tatti edition provides a newly collated Latin text and offers unique insight into the formation of one of the Renaissance's foremost vernacular writers.
Latin was for many centuries the common literary language of Europe, and Latin literature of immense range, stylistic power and social and political significance was produced throughout Europe and beyond from the time of Petrarch (c.1400) well into the eighteenth century. This is the first available work devoted specifically to the enormous wealth and variety of neo-Latin literature, and offers both essential background to the understanding of this material and sixteen chapters by leading scholars which are devoted to individual forms. Each contributor relates a wide range of fascinating but now little-known texts to the handful of more familiar Latin works of the period, such as Thomas More's Utopia, Milton's Latin poetry and the works of Petrarch and Erasmus. All Latin is translated throughout the volume.
This work contains prose translation of the poems of Neo-Latin poet Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), whose work provides insights into Renaissance art, literature and socio-political history. The text also examines topics such as his influence on the development of English poetry.
