Vernacular Works Research Articles

Ovid in Seventeenth-Century England

EASURING THE extent of Ovid's influence on English literature would be a task of formidable proportions, if not so large as to defy focus. What has been the influence of Ovid on English literature? asks a leading English critic. What, for that matter, has been the influence of whisky on English politics? Such things are not, finally, subject to measurement.l Yet we can at least wonder at the extraordinary impact of his poetry-especially the Metamorphoses, but also the love poems and Heroides-on earlier English literature. When that influence begins to wane, as it clearly does in England toward the end of the seventeenth century, we feel that a great tradition is coming to a close, and naturally look for an explanation. In one intelligent, engaging study of Ovid and his influence, L. P. Wilkinson seems to have provided the most comprehensive set of explanations, of which the following are relevant to the purposes of this essay:2 (1) The post-Renaissance shift in interest and taste saw the Metamorphoses less in demand as a mythological handbook or as a collection of erotic tales, the latter need having been filled by an increasing number of vernacular works of fiction. (2) Ovid suffered by comparison with recently discovered classical literature of much better quality, pre-eminently that of Greece. (3) Classical literature began to lose its hold on the moderns. (4) A Christian reaction against paganism had set in, which devalued mythology in the schools and salons. In this paper I shall point out yet another explanation for Ovid's

Vernacular Works in Latin Translation

Vernacular Works in Latin Translation

European Vernacular Works in Latin Translation

This essay is no more than a first attempt at a tentative exploration of an astonishingly wide topic. Every reader will be able to detect omissions and inadequacies for himself, but I hope that in a study such as the present no apology will be required.A number of years ago, quite by accident, I ran across Latin translations of Niccolò Machiavelli's Historie fiorentine (Florence, 1537) and Discorsi ([Rome], 1531). Later on, I was able to examine a large number of such Latin versions of European vernacular works in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. I hope eventually to be able to treat the topic in full; in the meantime, the following sketch will give some idea, however inadequate, of how much and what sort of material one can expect to find.

The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330-1340

From 1477 when Caxton, in his little Westminster shop, published the first book printed in England, the history of English book production is richly documented. Even before the invention of printing, the story of monastic books, in England and elsewhere, can be fairly well traced. A good deal is now known about the output of medieval university books. But there is a notable gap, even in our theorizing, about the early production of vernacular works in England, especially about the very large amount of secular verse that was composed before 1350 by anonymous authors. We know practically nothing about either the authors or the transcribers of those works, or about the circumstances under which manuscripts of contemporary date were compiled.