VIRGIL: Homer-Vergil to Chaucer
Dear list, I was recently asked by a colleague to translate a pair of poems in praise of Chaucer by the Tudor antiquary Leland - about five hundred years out of my period - hence my question: - is a comparison of Homer, Vergil and A Another as the chief poet of their respective languages a common topos in renaissance literature (I rather suspect it is) and if so could the list suggest a few examples prior to c. 1535? From my period, Bede contrasts the subject of one of his poems with Vergil's Aeneid at one point in the EHE, and Aldhelm points out that as Vergil was the first of the Latins to write a 'Georgics, he, Aldhelm, was the first of the Germanic nations to write on metrics, but that isn't quite the same thing. By the way, Leland has a charming little poem in which he plays on the similarity between his patron 's name (Brian) Tuke and Vergil's Tucca. Helen COB --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
RE: VIRGIL: Homer-Vergil to Chaucer
Comparisons between English and Classical authors had indeed become commonplace by the 1590s. Meres' Palladis Tamia, which compares a range of English authors more or less unconvincingly to classical authors (Harding the chronicler comes out as one of several English Ovids, for instance, and 'as Homer and Virgil among the Greeks and Latines are the chiefe Heroick Poets: so Spencer and Warner be our cheife heroicall Makers'). The most accessible text is in G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford, 1904). I'm not sure of the origins in England of this practice, and would suspect Leland is probably one of the earliest examples, if not the earliest example, and I would also suspect that the topos is dominantly a neo-Latin rather than a vernacular one before the mid-century. As I recall John Bale's Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, printed in Basle in 1557, makes similar comparisons, but I have not verified this distant and probably inaccurate memory. Colin Burrow, Fellow and Tutor, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA tel: 01223 332483 web: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Helen Conrad-O'Briain Sent: 04 January 2002 19:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: VIRGIL: Homer-Vergil to Chaucer Dear list, I was recently asked by a colleague to translate a pair of poems in praise of Chaucer by the Tudor antiquary Leland - about five hundred years out of my period - hence my question: - is a comparison of Homer, Vergil and A Another as the chief poet of their respective languages a common topos in renaissance literature (I rather suspect it is) and if so could the list suggest a few examples prior to c. 1535? From my period, Bede contrasts the subject of one of his poems with Vergil's Aeneid at one point in the EHE, and Aldhelm points out that as Vergil was the first of the Latins to write a 'Georgics, he, Aldhelm, was the first of the Germanic nations to write on metrics, but that isn't quite the same thing. By the way, Leland has a charming little poem in which he plays on the similarity between his patron 's name (Brian) Tuke and Vergil's Tucca. Helen COB --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
Re: VIRGIL: Homer-Vergil to Chaucer
Thank you very much! I'll suggest the Bale to my Chaucerian friend mentioning you , as my father would say, 'in the dispatch'. Helen COB On Wednesday, January 16, 2002, at 10:04 AM, Colin Burrow wrote: Comparisons between English and Classical authors had indeed become commonplace by the 1590s. Meres' Palladis Tamia, which compares a range of English authors more or less unconvincingly to classical authors (Harding the chronicler comes out as one of several English Ovids, for instance, and 'as Homer and Virgil among the Greeks and Latines are the chiefe Heroick Poets: so Spencer and Warner be our cheife heroicall Makers'). The most accessible text is in G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford, 1904). I'm not sure of the origins in England of this practice, and would suspect Leland is probably one of the earliest examples, if not the earliest example, and I would also suspect that the topos is dominantly a neo-Latin rather than a vernacular one before the mid-century. As I recall John Bale's Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, printed in Basle in 1557, makes similar comparisons, but I have not verified this distant and probably inaccurate memory. Colin Burrow, Fellow and Tutor, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA tel: 01223 332483 web: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Helen Conrad- O'Briain Sent: 04 January 2002 19:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:VIRGIL: Homer-Vergil to Chaucer Dear list, I was recently asked by a colleague to translate a pair of poems in praise of Chaucer by the Tudor antiquary Leland - about five hundred years out of my period - hence my question: - is a comparison of Homer, Vergil and A Another as the chief poet of their respective languages a common topos in renaissance literature (I rather suspect it is) and if so could the list suggest a few examples prior to c. 1535? From my period, Bede contrasts the subject of one of his poems with Vergil's Aeneid at one point in the EHE, and Aldhelm points out that as Vergil was the first of the Latins to write a 'Georgics, he, Aldhelm, was the first of the Germanic nations to write on metrics, but that isn't quite the same thing. By the way, Leland has a charming little poem in which he plays on the similarity between his patron 's name (Brian) Tuke and Vergil's Tucca. Helen COB --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub --- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub