Post-medieval Latin verse in English manuscript sources, c.1550-1700: initial findings

This presentation will offer an overview of the material, discuss briefly methodology and data analysis involved in a project surveying manuscript sources on this scale, and then focus on emergent findings. Areas of particular interest to other early modernists are likely to include: newly discovered Latin verse by significant figures of the period (such as Andrew Melville); new evidence for the circulation of the Latin work of well-known poets (such as Andrew Marvell); formal and metrical innovations and the relation between formal innovations in Latin and English verse; the prevalence of Latin-English verse translation; ’translanguaging’ elements such as macaronic verse; and evidence for patterns of readership as well as composition. The talk will be illustrated with slides of some of the c. 1400 manuscripts so far examined, and is likely to be of interest to graduate students and colleagues with an interest in early modern English poetry and literary culture, intellectual history, translation studies, manuscript studies, classical reception and neo-Latin. 

All welcome. There will be drinks and discussion after the talk. This event is organised by UCL Early Modern Exchanges, which is part of the Institute of Advanced Studies.