Estelle Haan - Böcker

Volume III of the new eleven-volume edition of Milton's Complete Works from the Oxford University Press provides a definitive scholarly edition of all of Milton's shorter poems in English, Italian, Latin, and Greek, as well as his Mask, taken from both published and manuscript sources. It presents his 1645 Poems complete, with all prefatory materials, to display the ways in which author, publisher, and printshop shaped this volume. It then presents all the new poems added in the 1673 edition (with the new Table of Contents), and the poems omitted from both editions. A careful collation of textual variants among these sources as well as the 1637 anonymous publication of Milton's Mask is provided. Also, the Bridgewater manuscript version of Milton's Mask (close to the acting version), and his working copy from the Trinity Manuscript, with its many alterations and additions, are transcribed in their entirety, so that the various versions may be compared and studied. A special feature of this edition is the new translation of Milton's many Latin and Greek poems that is both accurate and attentive to their literary quailities. Also, it supplies a poetic translation of Milton's six italian sonnets and Canzone. In addition, it presents in Appendices, of all the versions of Milton's shorter poems in all the contemporary manuscript and printed sources, so they may be compared and examined in relation to their specific contexts. The transcription of all the versions of Milton's poems in the Trinity Manuscript allows in several cases, notably 'Lycidas' and 'At a Solemn Music', for examination of the evolution of these poems as Milton weighed choices of diction and sound qualities and so enables further understanding of his poetic practices.Introductory essays address the occasions and circumstances for all these poems, the poetic development of the Vernacular poems as Milton worked in several genres, and for his Latin and Greek Poemata it provides an overview of Milton's achievement as a Neo-Latin poet, as well as a detailed account of the criticism pertaining to each poem. A Textual Introduction discusses all of the sources, printed and manuscript, in which Milton's poems appear, points up special features of many copies of both collected editions as well as the volume in which Milton's 'Lycidas' was first published (Justa Edouardo King naufrago), and indicates the marginalia and other notes supplied by several contemporary readers. As an aid to both students and scholars, the Commentary sections provide word definitions from the OED, highlighting occasions when Milton's usage was the earliest one recorded, and also identify biblical, classical, historical, and geographical allusions and references, and some relevant critical studies of particular elements.

In the first full-scale edition of Thomas Gray’s Latin poetry, the Latin text and facing English translation are complemented by a detailed introduction and comprehensive commentary that situate Gray’s Latin verse in relation to his vernacular poetry, epistolary correspondence, and, especially, his appropriation of classical and Neo-Latin literature. This book also traces hitherto unlocated manuscripts of several of his Latin poems, and includes an editio princeps of recently discovered Latin verses pertaining to his Neapolitan sojourn.Gray’s Latin poetry presents an illuminating portrait of the artist as a young man, mapping his growth and development from his Etonian days to his undergraduate years at Cambridge University, to his continental journey and his return to England. Impressively eclectic in its scope and tone, it ranges from experimental renderings of English, Greek and Italian verse to more strikingly original pieces, including poetic reinterpretations of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. Gray looks back to a classical past, offering imaginative re-readings of Lucretius, Virgil and Horace. At the same time, his Latin verse is firmly rooted in a postclassical world. At its heart is the theme of presences, whether sacred, imagined, absent or remembered, conveyed with a linguistic ingenuity that facilitates the encoding of homoeroticism in a Neo-Latin language of sensibility.

In the first full-scale edition of Thomas Gray’s Latin poetry, the Latin text and facing English translation are complemented by a detailed introduction and comprehensive commentary that situate Gray’s Latin verse in relation to his vernacular poetry, epistolary correspondence, and, especially, his appropriation of classical and Neo-Latin literature. This book also traces hitherto unlocated manuscripts of several of his Latin poems, and includes an editio princeps of recently discovered Latin verses pertaining to his Neapolitan sojourn.Gray’s Latin poetry presents an illuminating portrait of the artist as a young man, mapping his growth and development from his Etonian days to his undergraduate years at Cambridge University, to his continental journey and his return to England. Impressively eclectic in its scope and tone, it ranges from experimental renderings of English, Greek and Italian verse to more strikingly original pieces, including poetic reinterpretations of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. Gray looks back to a classical past, offering imaginative re-readings of Lucretius, Virgil and Horace. At the same time, his Latin verse is firmly rooted in a postclassical world. At its heart is the theme of presences, whether sacred, imagined, absent or remembered, conveyed with a linguistic ingenuity that facilitates the encoding of homoeroticism in a Neo-Latin language of sensibility.

William Dillingham’s Aegyptus Triumphata (1680) takes as its subject the plagues of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and Moses’ consequential hymn of thanksgiving to God (Exodus 7–15). This, the first edition of the poem, introduces it to the scholarly community. Balancing accessibility with critical and theoretical rigour, it presents the Latin text and a facing English translation, complemented by an Introduction and Commentary that situate the work in relation to: biblical verse-paraphrase; the biblical epic tradition from the late antique to the early modern periods; Dillingham’s Neo-Latin and vernacular corpus; his role as an anthologist and promoter of Neo-Latin verse; and his appropriation of biblical, classical, and Neo-Latin literature.This accomplished, yet hitherto neglected, poem assumes an interesting place alongside late antique and early modern Latin epics inspired by the Old Testament in general and by Exodus in particular. Central to the genre is an intertextual engagement with Virgil’s Aeneid. Dillingham’s brief epic Romanizes and creatively embellishes its biblical source through authorial commentary, a recourse to epic simile, and, most notably, an experimental engagement with Virgil’s poetic corpus and the biblical text’s quasi-Virgilian afterlives.