An Anthology of British Neo-Latin Literature

Gesine Manuwald, L. B. T. Houghton, Lucy R. Nicholas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350098909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachen der Antike

This volume offers a wide range of sample passages from literature written in Latin in the British Isles during the period from about 1500 to 1800. It includes a general introduction to and bibliography to the Latin literature of these centuries, as well as Latin texts with English translations, introductions and notes. These texts present a rich panorama of the different literary genres, styles and themes flourishing at the time, illustrating the role of Latin texts in the development of literary genres, the diversity of authors writing in Latin in early modern Britain, and the importance of Latin in contemporary political, religious and scientific debates. The collection, which includes both texts by well-known authors (such as John Milton, Thomas More and George Buchanan) and previously unpublished items, can be used as a point of entry for students at school and university level, but will also be of interest to specialists in a number of academic disciplines.

1

Utopia: Elsewhere and Nowhere

Thomas More (1478–1535), Extracts from Utopia

Lucy R. Nicholas

Introduction

Thomas More (1478–1535) is a towering figure in English history. He was a genuine Renaissance man who was active and flourished in so many areas of life: one of the greatest lawyers of the day, London undersheriff, and eventually Lord Chancellor, an author of history, social philosophy and poetry, and a fervent Catholic. He is perhaps best known for his premature end, his execution in 1535 on the orders of one whom he had once so loyally served, King Henry VIII. Locked in a clash of principles between faith and royal will following Henry’s break with Rome, More lost his life, but quickly enjoyed a rich afterlife, not just as a martyr and subsequently saint of the Catholic Church, but also through his written works. More is a complex figure who carries much freight, but the Latin he left behind can be fruitfully used to help cut through the myth-making and to understand the man and the world in which he operated.

More composed many works during his lifetime, in both Latin and English. This section is devoted to his Utopia of 1516. This highly enigmatic but endlessly engrossing work comprises two books. The first centres on a dialogue between characters both fictional and real, including More himself, and an invented character, a traveller called Raphael Hythlodaeus (Hythloday). The second and longer book is given over to a detailed description by Raphael of Utopia, a fantasy place, possibly inspired by the various discoveries during that period of the New World. Raphael outlines every dimension of Utopian life from its social organization and communal ownership of everything, to its simplicity, moral order and ideology. As regards its interpretation, many grand claims have been advanced over the centuries about this work: a cursory internet search reveals a multiplicity of assertions about its purpose as a Catholic tract, communist manifesto or expression of political idealism. The text has also been, and still is being, translated into a myriad of modern tongues from Spanish to Chinese and from Russian to Arabic. Yet it may be that somewhere along the line Utopia has been lost in translation. In fact, many nowadays do not realize that Utopia was originally written in Latin. However, it is by returning to the Latin that we are perhaps able to appreciate aspects of the work that have been sidelined. It is in the Latin itself that the original spirit of the work is most effectively captured.

The conscious choice by More to write Utopia in Latin is significant and not without its symbolism. To begin with, Latin was an international language, the only truly ‘European’ tongue of the time. A practised Latin style might win credit for the author beyond his/her place of origin. Indeed, Utopia was a cross-border project involving a group of European humanists, all of whom shared the common bond of Latin. This included not just More himself and his friend from the Netherlands, Peter Gillis, but also the Dutch Desiderius Erasmus who pushed to disseminate the work, the English Thomas Lupset, the French Guillaume Budé and the Dutch Hieronymus Busleyden, who wrote supporting letters that appeared as paratexts in the published text; alongside these must also be included the various humanist printers in Louvain, Paris and Basel. The use of Latin also carried subtler connotations: by casting his work in Latin, a matrix of classical learning could be established and a deeper dialogue with the classical world facilitated. Utopia is crammed with learned allusions to a variety of ancient authors, a feature evident particularly in the first extracts. Perhaps more crucially, the Latin of Utopia functioned as a conduit for specifically Greek language and ideas. The very title ‘Utopia’ immediately entails a degree of linguistic negotiation, for there is an ambiguity about whether the ‘u’ before the Greek word ‘topos’ (‘place’) is the Greek word ‘ou’ (meaning ‘not’) or ‘eu’ (meaning ‘good’), raising the question: is this about ‘no place’ or ‘the best place’? The same is true of the main protagonist’s name, ‘Hythlodaeus’, a term derived from the Greek for ‘speaker of nonsense’. The work is also predicated to a high degree on Lucianic jesting and Greco-Roman philosophy and rhetoric. All such features make it clear that More’s Utopia confounds straightforward assessments, and its readers are perhaps well advised to think of it less as a treatise of instruction or dogma and more as an early modern vehicle to think with.

Utopia went through four editions in More’s lifetime alone and enjoyed many more thereafter. Its influence, though difficult now to gauge with any real precision, was evidently immense. This work spawned an entire literary genre of utopian and dystopian fiction which features ideal societies or perfect cities, or their opposite. Early works influenced by Utopia included New Atlantis by Francis Bacon, Erewhon by Samuel Butler and Candide by Voltaire. Its impact may still be felt in modern science fiction. It is, of course, helpful to appreciate the work’s importance through history, but by reading the sections below, you may return ad fontes, to a sixteenth-century world of erudite winks and in-jokes, power politics, and the social and intellectual ferment of the time, without which this deliciously ambiguous composition could not have been produced.

Bibliography

Cave, T. (ed.) (2008), Thomas More’s Utopia in Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts, Manchester.

Logan, G. M. (ed.) (2011), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More, Cambridge.

McCutcheon, E. (1977), ‘Denying the Contrary: More’s Use of Litotes in the Utopia’, in R. S. Sylvester and G. P. Marc’hardour (eds), Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, 163–74, Hamden.

McCutcheon, E. (1983), My Dear Peter: the Ars Poetica and Hermeneutics for More’s Utopia, Ang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Utopia: Elsewhere and Nowhere: Thomas More (1478–1535), Extracts from Utopia
• 2 An Early Tudor Antiquarian at Bath: John Leland (c. 1503–1552), De thermis Britannicis
• 3 The Nature of the Universe: George Buchanan (1506–1582), De sphaera 1.1–51
• 4 A Celebration of Queen Elizabeth I’s Coronation in Verse: Walter Haddon (1515–1572), In … Elisabethae regimen
• 5 The Latin University Orations of Queen Elizabeth I: Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Speeches of 1566 and 1592
• 6 Female Funerary Verse: Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell (1540–1609), Epitaphic Poems
• 7 On Writing about Britain: William Camden (1551–1623), Prefatory Letter to Britannia
• 8 A Birthday Poem for Christ: Adam King (c. 1560–1620), Genethliacon Iesu Christi (c. 1586)
• 9 On Poetry, Politics and Religion: John Owen (1560?–1622), Selection of Epigrams
• 10 A Comic Exorcism: George Ruggle (1575– c. 1622), Ignoramus IV 11 (Excerpt)
• 11 ‘Dazel’d Thus with Height of Place’: An English Lyric in Two Latin Versions: English: Henry Wotton (1568–1639); Latin: Anonymous [Georg Weckherlin (1584–1653)?]
• 12 A Meeting in Mauritania: John Barclay (1582–1621), Argenis, Book 5, Chapter 8 (9)
• 13 The Gunpowder Plot: John Milton (1608–1674), In Quintum Novembris
• 14 A Frost Fair on the Thames: William Baker, Descriptio Brumae, et intensissimi Ianuario mense frigoris, quo Thamesis omnino congelata fuit (1634/5)
• 15 The Beauty and Horror of the Mountains: Thomas Burnet (c. 1635–1715), Telluris theoria sacra 1.1.9 (pp. 66–8)
• 16 A Satire on the Bishop of Salisbury: Anonymous (Thomas Brown?), In Episcopum Quendam (c. 1689)
• 17 A View of the Scottish Highlands: James Philp (1656/7–c. 1713), Grameid 3.10–36
• 18 Thomas Gray Prophesies Space Travel: Thomas Gray (1716–1771), Luna habitabilis 51–72, 78–95
• Index of Names
• Copyright