Latin Poems Research Articles

Astronomy, Latinity, Enlightenment: Niels Krog Bredal’s Poems Commemorating the Transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769

The subject of this article is three pieces of elegiac Latin poetry, written in Trondheim by the mayor of the town, Niels Krog Bredal. The occasion for the poems were the transits of Venus occurring in the years 1761 and 1769, a rare phenomenon attracting considerable attention from natural philosophers of the Enlightenment and spurring numerous scientific expeditions across the globe. Bredal wrote the poems to commemorate expeditions undertaken by Thomas Bugge and Urban Bruun Aaskow (Trondheim, 1761), Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (Trondheim, 1769), and Maximilianus Hell (Vardø, 1769). Bredal is primarily remembered as an important, albeit controversial, figure within Dano-Norwegian theatre history. His Latin poems reveal another side of his character, a person with a keen interest in the natural sciences, and more than willing to express his insights through poetry. The article includes an edition with critical apparatus, translation, and commentary.

Źródła, konteksty i okoliczności powstania Ody o zdobyciu Połocka Jana Kochanowskiego

The author set himself two aims. First, to demonstrate how the most important poet of the Polish Renaissance, Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584), participated in the propaganda campaign led by the chancery of the Polish King, Stephen Bathory, during the Livonian War in the year fought in the years 1577–1582. Second, to attempt to discover the sources and textual inspirations for the Oda o zdobyciu Polocka (Warsaw 1580), a Latin propaganda work commissioned from the poet by the Chancellor of Poland, Jan Zamoyski. To this end, the author placed the ode in a broad context of sources from the epoch, such as poems, pamphlets, maps, letters, etc. In the first part of the paper, the circumstances that accompanied the writing of the ode are discussed. The author explains the relations between Kochanowski and Zamoyski and reminds the pressure exerted by the Chancellor on the poet, so that he quickly finishes texts that are supposed to praise the victory over Muscovites. Kochanowski’s writing technique is also discussed. The author notes that the poet’s work resembled that of a philologist: preparing for writing a poem or a cycle of poems, Kochanowski made himself familiar with many various authorities. Thus he worked on the paraphrase of Psalterz (Psaltar 1579) and Treny (Laments 1580). According to the author, this was also Kochanowski’s modus operandi when he was writing Ode 12 and other texts on the war with Muscovy. In this part of the paper, all his works related to this subject are briefly discussed. In further parts, the author presents the sources that Kochanowski consulted when writing Ode 12. These include, first of all, previous poetic works, such as Horace’s odes and Latin poems written after the victory in the Battle of Orsha (1514). The author demonstrates that Kochanowski drew inspiration e.g. from Carmen de victoria Sigismundi by Joannes Dantiscus. Another significant sources used by the poet were chronicles and chorographies of Muscovy (Herberstein, Gwagnin), as well as drawings and maps depicting the capture of Polatsk. He was probably provided with iconographic accounts by Zamoyski’s messengers in January 1580. The author mentions that maps constituted a significant element of the chancery's propaganda strategy. In this part, he observes that the same sources were used by Kochanowski for his Jezda do Moskwy (The Ride to Muscovy 1583) and by Gerard Mercator for his map Russiae pars amplificata (1595). The most important authorities consulted by Kochanowski included the accounts of the capture of Polatsk that he obtained directly from the royal chancery. In the last part of the study, the author compares several narrative sources with the ode. He arrives at the conclusion that the narration in Ode 12 basically reflects the description of the siege present in other sources and that it is very detailed for a lyrical work. He also shows the rhetoric means used by Kochanowski to intensify the propaganda effect. At the end, the author places Ode 12 in the context of other renaissance utterances on the relation between history and poetry. He refers to the contemporary reflections of Antonio Minturno and Julius Caesar Scaliger.

“[…] Non urbs, tamen urbibus ipsa major.” The Image of The Hague in the Dutch Literature and Art of the 17th and 18th Century

Abstract Although in the early-modern period The Hague was not officially a city, its identity was based on specifically urban features. During the 17th and 18th century, its ambiguous status was explored by the authors of verse urban encomia and prose descriptiones urbium. In this article, the presentation of The Hague will be first discussed on the example of Caspar Barlaeus’ Latin poem “Haga”, and Constantijn Huygens’ Dutch encomium “’s Gravenhage” from the Dorpen [Villages] cycle of epigrams. Then, the image of The Hague will be examined in the context of an allegorical representation by Jan Caspar Philips in Jacob de Riemer’s Beschryving van ‘s Graven-hage [Description of The Hague, 1730]. The concluding remarks address the question of how the transformation of the status of The Hague undertaken by these writers and artists may be understood in the context of the literary-historical geography of the Northern Renaissance which has been a special subject of research by Professor Andrzej Borowski.

Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature by Jonathan Hsy (review)

Reviewed by: Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature by Jonathan Hsy Craig E. Bertolet Jonathan Hsy, Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2013. Pp. xii, 237. isbn: 13–978– 0–8142–1229–5. $59.95. Trading Tongues joins the growing field of studies examining the commercial language, practices, and culture of late medieval England. Hsy’s book ‘examines how multilingualism and medieval commerce shape texts written in medieval contact zones’ (4). In Hsy’s case, the principal ‘contact zone’ is the commercial world of late medieval London, and his book focuses on how commerce shapes the language used by writers in late medieval London and also how these writers ‘engaged in linguistic exchange’ (5) moved across languages and combined them in their texts. In his Introduction, Hsy reads two short poems through the lens of the linguistic diversity of fourteenth-century London as a way to illustrate the city as a ‘contact zone.’ The Latin poem ‘Stores of the City’ catalogues the sites of London in a mixture of Latin and Latinized English names, and the English poem ‘London Lickpenny’ describes how a speaker from outside of London negotiates streets filled with speakers of different languages and ‘how people deploy languages and adapt, often abruptly, to the different types of social interactions that city life requires’ (14). London-based writers are the focus of most of the chapters. The first chapter, for instance, concerns Geoffrey Chaucer’s relationship with two London locations: his dwelling over Aldgate and his workplace in the customs house near the Thames. Hsy reads the House of Fame and the Shipman’s Tale through the lens of these spaces reconstructed within Chaucer’s poetry. Chaucer, John Gower, and Charles d’Orleans are the subjects of the second chapter, which argues that the mediating space of the sea through maritime trade invites multilingual perspectives in poetic texts. Gower and Chaucer tell the tale of Constance to describe a character who becomes a commodity shared between different spaces. Charles d’Orleans’ poetry in English and in French shows rigid linguistic hierarchies with ‘high-prestige French [being] portable, but humble English’ not as portable (87). In the third chapter, Hsy pairs Gower with William Caxton because both the poet and the printer ‘crafted polyglot literary personas’ in order to produce ‘texts across many languages’ (91). Hsy writes that Caxton’s career and his translations show that England’s first printer was comfortable in many languages while he marketed his printed books to his ‘merchant class readers’ (128). The fourth chapter moves out of London to address how the Book of Margery Kempe ‘employs fictional geography to depict scenes of cross-linguistic communication both at home and overseas’ (154). While Margery is from Lynn rather than London, she demonstrates how her commercial background makes her attuned to code-switching into different languages and registers. It also problematizes how an orientation toward a native tongue ‘can shift through the social dynamics of travel’ (156). The fifth chapter moves the focus back to London by examining collections written by three London merchants in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in which the men compiled texts of letters, ordinances, and chronicles in more than one language. In constructing these books, Hsy asserts, the merchants [End Page 117] create ‘dynamic textual contact zones’ (193) and ask the reader to think in different languages, places, and times. In a Coda, Hsy suggests that Charles d’Orleans is a prime example of the writer who works on land and sea, close to the ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ of medieval culture’ (209). Trading Tongues is a fine analysis of how commerce and the nexus of trading languages it creates affected the production of literary texts at a key moment in English history when the cash-based system was beginning to replace the feudal system. Scholars have always known that understanding medieval texts requires the understanding of many languages. But Hsy challenges us to accept that the writers of this period inhabited many languages at once. This behavior affected not just the texts they produced, but also caused them to respond to the environment in which they worked. Asking us...

Poetic works

Aldhelm was the first Latin poet of Europe who was not a native speaker of Latin. The ingenuity and originality which he brought to the task of composing Latin poetry ensured that his poems would be widely read everywhere, but they were studied especially in England during the early medieval period. Aldhelm's poetic corpus includes the Carmina Ecclesiastica, a series of dedicatory poems which contain a wealth of detail about early Anglo-Saxon churches; the Carmen de Virginitate, a verse counterpart to his earlier prose De Virginitate, but which includes an extensive passage describing an allegorical battle of the vices and virtues; a collection of 100 riddles or Enigmata, which are an imaginative investigation of the structure of the natural world; and a brief rhythmical poem describing the effects of a mighty storm in southwest England. In each of the poetic genres he essayed, Aldhelm found a host of later imitators, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he was the most influential Latin poet whose works were studied in Anglo-Saxon England; indeed, many surviving Old English poems are simple translations or adaptations of Latin poems by Aldhelm. The translations are presented here with an introduction outlining what is known of Aldhelm's life and writings, and an appendix by Neil Wright contains a translation of Aldhelm's De Metris, a technical treatise on the composition of Latin verse.

Elegia Septima and Milton’s Erotic Temporalities

This essay examines Milton’s Elegia Septima within the context of his larger poetic canon to trace a pattern of thought connecting erotic desire with queer temporalities, thus complicating previous readings of the seventh elegy that frame the poem as simplistic and solely focused on heteroerotic attraction. Instead, the elegy positions erotic encounters as profoundly queer, especially in the sense that they collapse not only multiple objects of desire but also multiple moments in time. Such an approach allows readers to see a lacuna in the critical reception of the poem that has overlooked various forms of homoerotic and heteroerotic modes of relation, as well as how the elegy can be contextualized within the larger body of Milton’s early Latin poems and in relationship to later poems such as Paradise Lost.

William Morris' Synthetic Aeneids: Virgil as Physical Object

William Morris' Aeneid translation of 1875 (The Aeneids of Virgil) is today criticized for its archaism and anachronism; it ought rather to be read as a deliberate layering of historical periods in the reception of the Roman epic. This strategy of historical layering is paralleled in Morris' other Aeneid project of the early 1870s, an original illuminated vellum codex of the poem in Latin, which also telescopes the historical trajectory of the source text by the layering of historical styles and details. Morris' translation should be understood as a similarly ambitious, if more democratic, attempt to create a ‘cumulative’ Aeneid.

The Central Section of Catullus’ Attis

The Attis of Catullus was described by Kenneth Quinn (1970, 282) as “perhaps the most remarkable poem in Latin.” However, the five lines of divine digression which split the poem into two sections (63.39-43) have remained barely commented upon. In this article, I will discuss not only the various elements of these lines and their significance for poem 63, but the poem’s link to other ‘marriage’ poems of Catullus—particularly poem 64. I will investigate this theme particularly with reference to the counterpoint between Sol and Cybele and to the Iliadic reference in the appearance of Pasithea.

Apoteoza godła heraldycznego biskupa Wojciecha Skarszewskiego w łacińskich wierszach herbowych w rubrycelach chełmsko-lubelskich i lubelskich

A directorium plays an important role in the pastoral life of a diocese. In Poland such writings have been known since 16 th century. They are made up of a liturgical calendar, which lists local holidays, pastoral directives, as well as institutions and clergymen serving in a diocese. A directorium is issued by the decision of the bishop. In the early centuries, it was an opportunity for the bishop to print his coat of arms and an appropriate Latin poem on the first page of a directorium. Wojciech Skarszewski, the last bishop of Chelm, and then the first bishop of Lublin, had 34 directoria issued, which displayed the Skarszewskis’ coat of arms, i.e. the Leszczyc coat of arms. The poems presented in the directoria sometimes repeated themselves. Altogether, 21 original poems were issued in the directoria in Chelm and Lublin. Their authors remain unknown. The poems are in the form of epigrams, which are short texts, usually of a 4- or 6-verse stanzas, written in the elegiac couplet, of a two-part structure, where the first part refers to a coat of arms, and the other one refers to its allegorical explanation. This article presents the poems translated into Polish. Their analysis and translation is a new phenomenon as there is a lack of scientific works dealing with poems issued in the directoria.

Virgil and Joyce: Nationalism and Imperalism in the "Aeneid" and "Ulysses," by Randall J. Pogorzelski

Reviewed by: Virgil and Joyce: Nationalism and Imperalism in the "Aeneid" and "Ulysses," by Randall J. Pogorzelski R. J. Schork (bio) VIRGIL AND JOYCE: NATIONALISM AND IMPERALISM IN THE "AENEID" AND "ULYSSES," by Randall J. Pogorzelski. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016. x + 178 pp. $65.00. The engine that powers this book is paradox. The author's choice of that critical approach and literary technique makes for dense reading (and sporadic semi-comprehension), with flashes of interpretative ingenuity. Two keynote citations illustrate this situation: the [End Page 710] first is "MacHugh's concerns in his present of late colonial Ireland [in "Aeolus"] condition his reading of Virgil and the politics of land following the triumviral confiscations. Such a reading encourages a reevaluation of the poem's response to the politics of land in triumviral Italy" (18). The second such statement is the following: the novel [Ulysses] both exposes the presence of the classical in the modernist and demonstrates the presence of the modernist in the classical. The resulting readings are not those of Virgil's contemporaries, nor are they readings we could attribute to Joyce. Rather, my readings of Virgil are those made possible through an analysis of Joyce reading Virgil. (40) I parse the first statement as Pogorzelski's design in chapter 1 to look over the shoulder of Joyce contemplating Virgil appropriating Joyce; then the author concludes that he has also detected Virgil appropriating Joyce contemplating Virgil.1 However you catch it, there is an active three-way conversation going on. It is well worth the effort to tune in. First, here are some biographical disclosures that may help orient the bearings of my comment. Pogorzelski is a young classicist who has a professional interest in Joyce's Ulysses; in the works of both ancient and modern authors, he dives deeply into up-to-date matters of political theory and national identity. I am an old classicist with an enthusiasm for Joyce. My take on both his "opera" and those of Virgil could crisply be called "'philological fundamentalism'" (14). I like to hang around polylingual notebook indices or negative epic similes. I personally have zero zest for inquiry into the struggle for Irish independence or the postcolonial dimensions of Ulysses, but I am willing to let others give it a try. Pogorzelski generously and accurately cites my work on Joycean allusions to the text of the Aeneid; I have learned a lot from his exposition of the contemporary bases for and literary forms of nationalism. His synopses are uniformly clearer and more concise that those of his guiding sources. At the same time, it should be obvious that, generally speaking, his James Joyce is not mine, though we would probably settle on a more or less compatible view of the Aeneid. The "Introduction" pivots around the ground-breaking scholarship of Benedict Anderson on the roots and contours of nationalism.2 Discussion of this matrix is followed by cogent reviews of the modern concept of ancient Roman political identity and the impact of Irish nationalism on Joyce's fiction. Pogorzelski wisely indicates that he does not burden his readings of the Aeneid or Ulysses with strict distinctions between allusion, intertextuality, and reception theory (13-16). This section includes a compact preview of the book's structure. Chapter 1 presents the evidence for a comparative reading of [End Page 711] Joyce's "Aeolus" and Virgil's Eclogue 1 as allegories of the politics of land in Ireland. The key click is Professor MacHugh's learned suggestion that Deus nobis haec otia fecit (Ec 1.6, U 7.1056) would be an apt title of the vignette that Stephen Dedalus alliteratively labels "A Pisgah Sight of Palestine" or "The Parable of the Plums" (U 7.1057-58). Here Pogorzelski suggests an extrapolation between Virgil's verses, Augustus's early land policy, and the British parliament's Wyndham Act of 1903 that approved loans so that Irish Land League proponents or strapped tenant-farmers could purchase the land they worked. This bivalent context imparts a political spin to both the Latin poem and to Joyce's Irish application of the Virgilian allusion. I do not, however, see enough supporting parallels to...

The Fruit of Love in Giambattista Basile's “The Three Citrons”

The magical fruit featured in Giambattista Basile’s baroque fairy tale “The Three Citrons” transforms into the protagonist’s longed-for white-and-red wife. Basile’s unusual choice of citron as the object of this love metamorphosis belongs to the tradition of citrus representation in early modern Italy, in particular, Giovanni Pontano’s long Latin poem De Hortis Hesperidum (1501). This text identifies citrus with the mythical golden apples of the Garden of the Hesperides and with Venus’s own fruit. Through the exaltation of citrus, Pontano and Basile glorify the region where they made their home; furthermore, the parallels between the metamorphosis in “The Three Citrons” and the one in Pontano’s Latin poem give luster to the language and the theme of Basile’s Neapolitan-dialect fairy tale.

“Ardebo igneo amore Tui”: De Coelestino Leuthnero O.S.B., Matris Dei amatore

<em>"In my fiery love for you I will burn": Coelestinus Leuthner OSB, the lover of the Mother of God</em>. This article examines the Latin poems of the Benedictine monk Coelestinus (Cölestin) Leuthner (1695–1759), who taught Rhetoric at the gymnasiums of Freising and Salzburg. Those who read Leuthner will find that his poetry, for all its variety with regard to both genres (epigrams, odes and elegies) and subject matters (which are indeed many and diverse), creates a kind of red string leading – like an Ariadne’s thread – to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Poems in her honour are placed at the beginning of every single part of his collection of poems (Salzburg, no year), seemingly in order to render the various parts of the work coherent with each other. Through these opening poems the poet gradually ascends to the summit of his own affections for Mary. He starts by addressing Mary as the Lady of Sorrows, then turns to the Lady of Miracles and after that to the Refuge of Sinners, until he finally praises Mary Assumed into Heaven. According to the different literary genres Leuthner refers either directly or subtly and covertly to various Roman poets who are considered the foremost in their genres. Thus, in his epigrams, Leuthner alludes to Martial, in his odes, to Horace, in his elegies, to Propertius and Ovid. Furthermore, Leuthner considers the very name of Mary to contain something magnificent and gracious. This is something which the poet illustrates not only through one particular poem, in which he deals with three etymologies of her name, but also through examples taken from history, namely, Mary the sister of Lazarus and Mary Stuart, the catholic Queen of Scotland who suffered what Leuthner reckons to be a particularly memorable martyr’s death for her faith. When all these circumstances are taken into consideration, it becomes evident that this manifest love for Mary the Mother of God, whom the poet does not refrain from characterizing as “divine” and a “goddess”, actually constitutes Leuthner’s special way of taking up arms against the Lutherans, who used to abstain from the cult of the Immaculate Virgin and martyrs in general. Finally, in the examination of Leuthner’s poetry considerable importance should be ascribed to the Prince and Archbishop of Salzburg, who after all kept Leuthner on his payroll, and even more to the Royal House of Habsburg itself, with its efforts to keep reformed Christians away from its territories.

Medieval Towers, or a Pre-History of the Louvre

Examining the initial construction of the Louvre as part of Philip Augustus’ program of fortifications in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, this article examines texts depicting towers defending waterways and their possible influence on the architectural imaginary. The ninth-century monk Abbo’s Latin poem about Norse raids on Paris in 885-886 conveyed the importance of elevation and solid stone construction for defensive towers, and the need to protect the Seine from the northern threats. Twelfth-century romances such as the Roman d’Enéas and Partonopeus de Blois describe impressive towers ten times taller than the Louvre’s citadel, but whose proportions were strikingly similar.

A Renaissance Wedding. The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano D'Aragona, 26–30 May 1475. Introduced, translated and edited from the Italian by Jane Bridgeman. Latin poems edited and translated by Alan Griffiths. London/Turnhout : Harvey Miller Publishers, 2013, 198 pp. ISBN 9781905375936.

<i>A Renaissance Wedding. The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Wedding of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano D'Aragona, 26–30 May 1475</i>. Introduced, translated and edited from the Italian by Jane Bridgeman. Latin poems edited and translated by Alan Griffiths. London/Turnhout : Harvey Miller Publishers, 2013, 198 pp. ISBN 9781905375936.

Attitudes to the early Church and the Age of Conversion in late medieval Scotland

The conversion of Scotland, in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, was carried out largely by Gaelic-speaking missionaries from Ireland. When Scotland was largely Gaelic-speaking it was freely acknowledged that the conversion had come mainly from Ireland. But in the later Middle Ages, as Gaelic retreated from the Lowlands and became increasingly seen there as barbaric and uncivilised, new historical models were developed in Scottish hagiography which portrayed missionaries as civilised Lowlanders penetrating and pacifying the barbaric Highlands. In the course of this process the ancient Picts disappeared from view. This rewriting of history could not overcome the known facts about St Columba, however, and on the eve of the Reformation Roderick MacLean, a Gaelic-speaking bishop (with Lutheran sympathies), wrote elaborate and sophisticated Latin poems proclaiming the achievements of Columba and Iona.

Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High and Late-Medieval England by Andrea Denny-Brown (review)

Reviewed by: Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High and Late-Medieval England by Andrea Denny-Brown Nicole D. Smith Andrea Denny-Brown, Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High and Late-Medieval England. Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012. Pp. xiv, 252. ISBN: 978–0–81421–190–8. $59.95. Andrea Denny-Brown’s rich study begins with a critical commonplace: clothing has inherently transformative properties. Prior analyses of dress in medieval literature have tended to measure these transformations in terms of identity and self-hood. Denny-Brown charts new territory by reading fashion’s inherent changeability as an index of cultural change, material transience, and poetic innovation. In Chapter One, Denny-Brown argues that Boethius figures his central argument in his Consolatio in terms of dress: Fortune’s manipulation of her subject’s garments bespeaks both shifts in material gains and losses and the randomness of earthly power. While material goods are not prevalent in the Consolatio, Boethius’ experience of personal loss initiates philosophical and literary projects that undergird Denny-Brown’s entire study. Attire allows for an exploration not only of medieval desires but also poetic aesthetics, as seen in the Consolatio’s own shifts between meter and prose that mark Fortune’s capricious whims. Where the first chapter establishes a textual prehistory that understands dress in broad terms to convey an allure of attire as a trope of change, Chapter Two turns to particular sartorial details of contemporary clothing in order to illustrate the evolution of Fortune as an emblem of—and for—fashion. In tracing the development of Fortune’s own dress as depicted by writers such as Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun, Geoffrey Chaucer, Guillaume de Machaut, and John Lydgate, Denny-Brown charts a trajectory of cultural change mediated through dress: Fortune’s clothing spans a range of signification from conspicuous consumption to self-fashioning. Chapter Three takes as its subject the luxurious ecclesiastical garment, the capa (cape or cope), as it is represented in Bishop William Durand’s Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (Rationale for Divine Offices) and a short satirical Latin poem, ‘Song Upon the Tailors.’ Denny-Brown argues that each text engages the contemporary legislation that sought to distinguish ecclesiastical garments from secular fashions by presenting the former as unchanging and endorsed by the Bible. She finds a connection between changes in fashion and evolutions in literary interpretation in the high Middle Ages, reminding her readers that biblical exegesis has long been connected to clothing metaphors since to interpret means to unveil hidden meanings [End Page 143] clothed by language. The chapter thus offers readings not only of opposing views of ecclesiastical garments—as ciphers for divine order and perfection in contrast to material imperfections that must be transcended—but also of dress as a means to style ways of reading. The fourth chapter, arguably the most rewarding in its critical innovation, attends to the luxury adornments of Griselda’s sartorial transformations in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. Denny-Brown identifies the adverbial phrase, ‘in swich richesse,’ which modifies Griselda’s famous translation from peasant girl to marchioness, as an understudied image that marks a critical shift from Griselda’s own antimaterialism to the conspicuous consumption of the ‘arch wives’ featured in the Tale’s Envoy. She presents dress as a flexible signifier that announces an allegory of a virtuous soul, a commentary on the sartorial and spending excesses of bourgeois women, and the Clerk’s own excessive frugality in his crafting of plain poetry. In contrast to Griselda, who typifies resolute patience in a world marked by material excess and change, the galaunt—the medieval precursor to the dandy and fop, and the focus of Chapter Five—represents the playful, profligate, and style-conscious man who transforms his attire with each wave of sartorial innovation. A similar contrast persists in terms of a literary aesthetic: where the Clerk mirrors Griselda’s material disengagement by refusing to adorn his poetry with unnecessary rhetorical devices and literary tropes, writers that feature galaunts in their poems delight in highly stylized poetics. The galaunt’s clothing does not signify social status, but rather exemplifies an aesthetic playfulness...

How to read a Latin poem: if you can't read Latin yet

INTRODUCTION GUIDE TO THE PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN PRELUDE: TO THE READER EPILOGUE GUIDE TO FURTHER READING GLOSSARY

Krzysztof Dorohostajski’s activities dedicated to the Muses

Krzysztof Moniwid Dorohostajski is known as the author of the work Hippica to jest o koniach ksiegi ( Hippica or the books about horses ). In a manuscript preserved in the Ossolineum collections in Wroclaw (ms. II 185) one can find Dorohostajski’s poems in Latin, Greek and Polish, inscribed by him personally. The longest piece is Lament Rzeczypospolitej Matki po rozjachaniu z nierządnej elekcyjej anno 1587 (T he Motherland’s lamentation after leaving the mismanaged election in 1587 ). This commemorative work inspired by the election of the king of Poland during the third interregnum shows not only the author’s writing technique but also his political affinities. Another Dorohostajski’s poem is entitled Wiosny opisanie ( The description of spring ). It contains Horatian motifs such as a description of the world awaking after winter, mythological references and reflections on transience. These previously unpublished works have been included in the appendix to the article.

How to Read a Latin Poem If You Can't Read Latin Yet by WILLIAM FITZGERALD

How to Read a Latin Poem If You Can't Read Latin Yet by WILLIAM FITZGERALD

Dante's Parnassus: Raphael's Parnaso

Dante’s Parnassus: Raphael’s Parnaso DISKIN CLAY Parnassus: A complex mountain mass, with two main peaks; hence Ovid’s biceps Parnassus. The higher summit is called Lykoura or Lykeri (“Wolf Mountain,” anciently Lykorea, 2457 m.) and the lower Gerontovrachos (“Old Man’s Rock,” 2435 m. —Blue Guide to Greece. 1. DANTE’S PARNASSUS There are two mountains that bear the name Parnassus. One is located in the imagination of European poets and painters who lived far to the west of Phokis in Greece; the other is more forbidding and distant. Its two peaks rise above Delphi to a great and austere height. A ski lift now desecrates their approach from the village of Arachova . The laurel does not grow on its slopes and Apollo and the Muses are nowhere to be seen—only sheep graze there and the sheepdogs that protect them. Below it is the spring of Kastalia (now closed to visitors as a source of inspiration ) and the oracle of Apollo. European Parnassus was never an austere and terrifying Greek mountain, radiant with the smell of oregano in its season . It was a place for expressing and organizing conceptions of poetry, poets, and the worth and authority of both poetry and poets. Boccaccio evokes Dante’s ascent both to Parnassus and Helicon in a Latin poem he wrote to Petrarch :1 Novisti forsan et ipse Traxerit ut iuvenem Phoebus per celsa nivosi arion 22.2 fall 2014 Cyrreos, mediosque sinus tacitos recessus Naturae, coelique vias terraeque marisque, Aonios fontes, Parnasi culmen . . . Perhaps you knew yourself How Phoebus drew the young man through the snowy heights of Cyrrha, to the inner and silent depths of Nature, and the paths of earth and sea, the springs of Aonia, and the summit of Parnassus . . . Boccaccio goes on in a last line to take Dante to Rome, Paris, and England. England must be an exaggeration, but Rome Dante reached in 1301 (and it seems in the jubilee year of 1300). Both Boccaccio and Benvenuto Cellini thought that Dante reached Paris in his exile. England he reached only in spirit. The summit of Parnassus became a place not of the harmonious music of Apollo and the nine Muses but of ranking and contestation. It has a suitable peak and sloping shoulders , as we can appreciate from Raphael’s Parnaso in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican (fig. 1). Before Parnassus arose in the distance as a lofty vista projected by the imagination of Roman poets, there were other Greek mountains associated with poetry, most importantly Helicon and Kithairon in Boeotia (Boccaccio’s Aonia), and Pieria to the northeast, in Macedonia. The Roman poets who ascended the steep slopes of these mountains were, by their own profession , solitary and they often claimed to be the first to drink from Castalia, Delphi’s inspiring spring. Dante knew of Greek Parnassus from a great distance, as did other Roman and Italian poets from across the Adriatic. He knew the meaning of a few Greek words, but he could not read Greek. Yet, from the distance of his exile from Florence in northern and northeastern Italy, he could climb Parnassus . Its lower peak he had reached with the Eden that awaited him at the summit of his island Mount of Purgatory. He then began his ascent of the higher peak of Cirrha at the start of his Paradiso. Already, towards the end of the Purgadante ’s parnassus: raphael’s parnaso 4 torio, as he reaches the summit of the Mount of Purgatory, Dante speaks of the pagan poets who dreamed of his terrestrial Paradise. On their Parnassus, they imagined a Golden Age (Purgatorio xxvii.141). Dante’s most striking evocation of pagan Parnassus, though, comes in his invocation to Apollo in the opening of the first canto of the Paradiso. This invocation is ambiguous , and very few of its interpreters have registered its ambiguity as it veers from the pagan to the Christian (Paradiso i.13–36): O buono Appollo, a l’ultimo lavoro fammi del tuo valor sì fatto vaso, come dimandi a dar l’amato alloro. Infino a qui l’un giogo di Parnaso assai mi fu; ma or con amendue m’è vopo...