The Early Modern Cultures of Neo-Latin Drama

The vitality and power of expression of Neo-Latin Drama
The essays in this collection all illustrate the vitality of Neo-Latin drama in early modern Europe, arising from its productive combination of classical models with deep-rooted vernacular traditions. While the plays were often composed in the context of a school or university setting, the dramatists seldom neglected the need to appeal to a broad audience, including non-Latinists. Yet the use of Latin, and the ambiguity of a plurivocal literary form, allowed the authors of these plays to introduce messages and ideas which could be subversive of the prevailing political and religious authorities. At the same time, humanist colleges, and their Jesuit successors, were quick to see the educational advantages to be derived from staging plays performed by pupils, which had the advantage of acting as powerful advertisements for the schools. Neo-Latin drama in all its forms offered a freedom of expression and form which is rare in other Renaissance literary genres.

Contributors
J. Pascual Barea (Universidad de Cádiz), J. Bloemendal (Huygens Institute, KNAW, The Hague), E. Borza (Université catholique de Louvain), J. De Landtsheer (University of Leuven), A. Eyffinger (Huygens Institute, KNAW, The Hague), C. Ferradou (Université de Provence), S. Knight (University of Leicester), J. Loach (Cardiff University), H. B. Norland (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), V. Coroleu Oberparleiter (University of Salzburg), O. Pédeflous (Paris IV and Institut Thiers), C. Ryan (Merton College, Oxford), M. Verweij (Royal Library of Belgium).

Table of Contents

– Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor, Introduction

– Olivier Pédeflous, Ravisius Textor’s School Drama and its Links to Pedagogical Literature in Early Modern France – Carine Ferradou, George Buchanan’s Sacred Latin Tragedies Baptistes and Iephthes: What Place for Humankind in the Universe?

– Elia Borza, La traduction de tragédies grecques: Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici et les problèmes liés à la métrique

– Howard B. Norland, John Foxe’s Apocalyptic Comedy, Christus Triumphans

– Jeanine De Landtsheer, Lambertus Schenckelius’s Tragoedia(e) Sanctae Catharinae

– Michiel Verweij, The Terentius Christianus at Work: Cornelius Schonaeus as a Playwright

– Joaquín Pascual Barea, School Progymnasmata and LatinDrama: thesis, refutatio, confirmatio and laus in the Dialogue on the Conception of Our Lady (1578) by the Spanish Jesuit Bartholomaeus Bravo (1553 or 1554-1607)

– Judi Loach, Performing in Latin in Jesuit-run Colleges in Mid- to Late-17th-Century France: Why, and with what Consequences?

– Jan Bloemendal, Similarities, Dissimilarities and Possible Relations Between Early Modern Latin Drama and Drama in the Vernacular

– Cressida Ryan, An Ignoramus about Latin? The Importance of Latin Literatures to George Ruggle’s Ignoramus

– Sarah Knight, ‘Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum’: Robert Burton and Patronage

– Veronika Coroleu Oberparleiter, Simon Rettenpacher’s Comedy Votorum discordia

– Arthur Eyffinger, ‘The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind’: Greek Playwrights as Moral Guidance to Hugo Grotius’s Social Philosophy

– Index nominum

Philip Ford

Philip Ford was Professor of French and Neo-Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, Associate of the Belgian Royal Academy, and President of FISIER.

Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor is College Lecturer in English at Churchill College, Cambridge, specializing in Tudor literature. He is Secretary of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies and the Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies.