Horace Made New Horatian Influences on British Writing from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century

Collection of essays exploring Horace's place in English literature and culture.

This book, first published in 1993 and a celebration of the bimillennium of Horace's death and a successor to Ovid Renewed (Cambridge University Press, 1988), explores in a balanced and comprehensive way, the presence of Horace in English letters and culture from the Renaissance onwards, in the form of a series of critical essays. It shows that there has been a continuous interest in Horace throughout the modern period, whereas it is often supposed that Horace's influence was only of central importance in the eighteenth century. Horace indeed is a major (if often hidden) element in the English poetic tradition, both directly and through the imitation and appropriation of his works by Wyatt, Jonson, Dryden, Pope and others. The book also casts fresh light on the character and interpretation of Horace, things intimately connected with the historical 'reception' of his works, particularly by some of their most influential and sensitive readers, the great English poets. The collection is aimed at a wide and general readership.

List of plates; Notes on contributors; Preface; Abbreviations; 1. Introduction Charles Martindale; 2. Horace at home and abroad: Wyatt and sixteenth-century Horatianism Colin Burrow; 3. The best master of virtue and wisdom: the Horace of Ben Jonson and his heirs Joanna Martindale; 4. Marvell and Horace: colour and translucency A. D. Nuttall; 5. Cowley's Horatian mice David Hopkins; 6. Figures of Horace in Dryden's literary criticism Paul Hammond; 7. Horace's Ode 3.29: Dryden's 'Masterpiece in English' Stuart Gillespie; 8. Pope and Horace Robin Sowerby; 9. Good humour and the Agelasts: Horace, Pope and Gray Felicity Rosslyn; 10. Horace and the nineteenth century Norman Vance; 11. Horace's Kipling Stephen Medcalf; 12. Some aspects of Horace in the twentieth century Charles Tomlinson; 13. Deniable evidence: translating Horace C. H. Sisson; 14. Postscript: images of Horace in twentieth-century scholarship Don Fowler; Notes; Bibliography; Plates; Index.

This book, a celebration of the bimillennium of Horace's death, presents a collection of essays exploring the place in English literature and culture of one of the three most influential Latin poets, while casting fresh light on the character of Horace's own poetry.