Book contents
- A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
- A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Shorter Verse
- Part II Longer Verse
- Chapter 9 Panegyric Epic in Early Modern England
- Chapter 10 Latin Style and Late Elizabethan Poetry
- Chapter 11 Palingenian Epic
- Afterword
- Metrical Appendix: Latin Metres
- Bibliography A: Manuscripts
- Bibliography B: Early Printed Books
- Bibliography C: Secondary Literature
- Index
Chapter 9 - Panegyric Epic in Early Modern England
from Part II - Longer Verse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2022
- A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
- A Literary History of Latin & English Poetry
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Shorter Verse
- Part II Longer Verse
- Chapter 9 Panegyric Epic in Early Modern England
- Chapter 10 Latin Style and Late Elizabethan Poetry
- Chapter 11 Palingenian Epic
- Afterword
- Metrical Appendix: Latin Metres
- Bibliography A: Manuscripts
- Bibliography B: Early Printed Books
- Bibliography C: Secondary Literature
- Index
Summary
Several of the most remarkable political poems of the mid-seventeenth century, including Marvell’s ‘First Anniversary’ (1655) and Dryden’s ‘Astraea Redux’ (1660), belong to a genre which has not been clearly defined in English literature. These substantial poems, each of several hundred lines, derive elements from a range of panegyric forms, including the tradition of the political ode discussed in ; but the main generic model for poetry of this sort, which is little represented in English before Marvell’s ‘First Anniversary’, is the panegyric epic of the late antique poet Claudian: a genre, new to Latin when Claudian began writing, which combined the techniques of prose panegyric with contemporary (rather than mythological) epic. This chapter seeks to set the major seventeenth-century English examples of this form – as well as a handful of English-language precursors – within the wider context of a Latin genre which, though now obscure, was both widely understood and frequently composed throughout early modern Europe.
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- A Literary History of Latin & English PoetryBilingual Verse Culture in Early Modern England, pp. 355 - 405Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022