Milton’s Cambridge Latin: Performing in the
Genres 1625-1632
Introduction
In Milton’s world universities did their official business in Latin, be it debating or declamation, commemorating dead worthies or hosting royalty. Milton shone at all these “exercises.” And displayed his powers in the poems he gathered into his first volume, Poems 1645. Working on study leaves in Cambridge libraries, I immersed myself in its books and mss, to show how Milton came to shine in these Latin genres. And this shining fuels his theme of Vocation for his Poems 1645.
Description
The genres are described and sampled in turn. Prose genres move from the most public and prominent, the disputations, through associated verses (“act verses”), to declamations. Verse genres commemorate dead worthies, as poets vied in display of their effusions by pinning them to a worthy’s hearsecloth or reciting them in college. Such observances peaked in the verses celebrating the nation’s deliverance in 1605 from the Gunpowder Plot. Milton joined in with his longest Latin poem, In Quintum Novembris “At age 17.”
Published: June 2005
Published by: State University of New York at
Binghamton, Medieval & Renaissance Texts
& Studies