Andr De Resende’s Poemata Latina/latin Poems

Description

Resende was a true humanist, religious but free of bigotry, devoted to the Classics, a creative writer and a fine scholar on a very wide range of topics, interested in every aspect of Renaissance life and culture. Besides over 12,000 verses of Latin poetry, in almost every Classical meter, Resende composed biographies of Prince Edward and Friar Pedro in mellifluous Portuguese, of St. Gil in perfect Latin, a definitive history of vora, an account of the battle of Diu, and various archaeological works. Many letters have survived, and he also published his Latin and Portuguese public orations and theological works. This collection includes a short biography of Resende and a large collection of his Latin poems, from about 1515 until his death in 1573, with both the Latin and the English translation. John R. C. Martyn offers us an impressive work in this volume, ambitious both in scope and magnitude. . . . the poems are first edited in Latin (with an appended apparatus criticus); the English version follows with endnote apparatus which covers philological commentaries, explanations, etc. Each section of chapter 3 (autobiographical themes, Portuguese themes, Sebastian and Turkish themes, classical themes, nativity themes, religious themes, moralizing themes, and eclogues) is prefaced by an introductory essay which covers a metrical commentary on the poems, an analysis of the theme in relation to Resendes poetry and to classical and Renaissance Latin poetry, and numerous bibliographical references. . . . Martyns work as an editor is of enormous merit, both in editing and commenting on Resendes poems. . . Martyns paramount work is an incentive for future scholarly activity which will contribute to a better definition of the richness and variety of sixteenth-century Latin letters on the Iberian Peninsula. Neo-Latin News