| A Middle English Translation from Petrarch's Secretum Contributor(s): Wilson, Edward (Editor), Wakelin, Daniel (Author) |
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ISBN: 0198828330 ISBN-13: 9780198828334 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA OUR PRICE: $70.30 Product Type: Hardcover Published: October 2018 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Ancient And Classical - Literary Criticism | Poetry - Poetry | Ancient & Classical |
| Dewey: 871.03 |
| LCCN: 2018288885 |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.3" W x 8.1" (0.70 lbs) 352 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Ancient (To 499 A.D.) |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This is the first printed edition of a landmark work in the history of English humanism and perhaps English drama: a translation of part of Petrarch's Secretum into English verse. Copied at Winchester Cathedral in 1487, it is only the third work by Petrarch to be translated into English and is the most accurate and extensive translation from his work before the 1530s. It offers an insight into early English responses to humanist learning, with its balance of classical and religious ideas, and to the cosmopolitan and urbane taste of fifteenth-century English churchmen in the century before the Reformation. It might bear witness to the inventiveness of English poetry in a period with few such records; and, as Secretum is a dialogue, it might even be counted an early English secular work for performance. The edition has detailed explanatory notes and a glossary, revealing its verbal inventiveness and the translator's familiarity with Chaucerian verse traditions. It has an extensive introduction, relating it to literary culture at Winchester at the time and to the manuscripts of Petrarch's Latin Secretum in England at the time. |