John Milton, Latin Writings – a selection
Introduction
The chance came straightaway in 1997, to follow up Milton’s Languages with this volume for the Dutch series of NeoLatin texts, Bibliotheca Latinitatis Novae (BLN). I met its founder, Jan Waszink, in Cambridge on leave. I had help from Cambridge colleague David Money, who has used the volume in his undergraduate teaching. One special delight was translating poems into verse, as he himself always did. Another was reading some of it aloud at the launch in Amsterdam. And further, to read his poems among his prose, which (unlike the verse) he wrote lifelong
Description
The emphasis in selecting poems falls on whole poems, so as to experience Milton at his best before he switched to English-only: Mansus, Epitaphium Damonis, Ode: Ad Rousium. It was an unusual delight also to meet the poems among a sampling of his voluminous prose — from his letters to friends, to his political diatribes, to his longest work of all, his home grown theology De Doctrina Christiana. Latin prose was the medium of most intellectual exchange at Cambridge.
Published: January 1998
Published by: Leuven University Press