Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocal Forest was a poem by James Howell published in 1640, [1] which launched Howell's literary career. It was published in English in multiple editions and was translated into French [2] and Latin. [3]
Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove, or the Vocal Forest was a poem by James Howell published in 1640, [1] which launched Howell's literary career. It was published in English in multiple editions and was translated into French [2] and Latin. [3]
Dodona's Grove is an allegory of Europe, particularly England, depicting events between 1603 and 1640. [3] Dodona, in the title, refers to the ancient Hellenic oracle of Zeus in Epirus. [4]
Covered in the poem are the Spanish match, the Gunpowder Plot, the murder of Thomas Overbury, and the assassination of Buckingham. [5] The political criticisms in Dodona's Grove may have contributed to Howell's imprisonment in 1643. [3]
In the poem, plants represent prominent persons. [6] The British oak tree in Dodona's Grove represents the Stuarts. [7]
Historian Henry Hallam criticized the work harshly, calling it "clumsy", "unintelligible", "dull", and "an entire failure". [8] Despite its shortcomings, it is speculated to have been an influence on James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana . [2] Bibliographer Albrecht von Haller was tricked into including Dodona's Grove in his Bibliotheca Botanica. [1]
Aphra Behn was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors. Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy in Antwerp. Upon her return to London and a probable brief stay in debtors' prison, she began writing for the stage. She belonged to a coterie of poets and famous libertines such as John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. Behn wrote under the pastoral pseudonym Astrea. During the turbulent political times of the Exclusion Crisis, she wrote an epilogue and prologue that brought her legal trouble; she thereafter devoted most of her writing to prose genres and translations. A staunch supporter of the Stuart line, Behn declined an invitation from Bishop Burnet to write a welcoming poem to the new king William III. She died shortly after.
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age. His works include a sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, a treatise, The Defence of Poesy and a pastoral romance, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.
Henry Hallam was an English historian. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, he practised as a barrister on the Oxford circuit for some years before turning to history. His major works were View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818), The Constitutional History of England (1827), and Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1837). Although he took no part in politics himself, he was well acquainted with the band of authors and politicians who led the Whig party. In an 1828 review of Constitutional History, Robert Southey claimed that the work was biased in favour of the Whigs.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1658.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1626.
Dame Helen Louise Gardner, was an English literary critic and academic. Gardner began her teaching career at the University of Birmingham, and from 1966 to 1975 was a Merton Professor of English Literature, the first woman to have that position. She was best known for her work on the poets John Donne and T. S. Eliot, but also published on John Milton and William Shakespeare. She published over a dozen books, and received multiple honours.
James Howell was a Welsh writer and historian. The son of a Welsh clergyman, he was for much of his life in the shadow of his elder brother Thomas Howell, who became Lord Bishop of Bristol.
The Story of Art, by E. H. Gombrich, is a survey of the history of art from ancient times to the modern era.
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Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson, FBA was a Scottish literary scholar, editor, and literary critic.
Christian literature is the literary aspect of Christian media, and it constitutes a huge body of extremely varied writing.
The Journal des sçavans, established by Denis de Sallo, is the earliest academic journal published in Europe. It is thought to be the earliest published scientific journal. It currently focuses on European history and premodern literature.
Spalding Priory was a small Benedictine house in the town of Spalding, Lincolnshire, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and St Nicholas.
Early Modern Literary Studies is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of English literature and literary culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was established in 1995 and is published with the support of the Humanities Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. The editor in chief is Matthew Steggle.
The Ecbasis captivi is an anonymous Latin beast fable that probably dates to the middle of the 11th century, and was likely written in the Vosges region of France. It is the oldest example of a European beast fable to survive, and the first medieval European example of anthropomorphic animals. The poem is written in hexameters with Leonine internal rhyme frequently used throughout the poem. The text survives in two manuscripts, both of which now are at the Royal Library of Belgium.
The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is a fifteenth-century poem written in English. The work exists in two redactions: the first was composed after the siege of Calais in 1436 but before the end of 1438, and a second edition of the work before June 1441. This second edition was probably revised again. Nineteen manuscripts contain the Libelle, which consists of about 1,100 lines in rhyming couplets, with a proem in rhyme-royal and a stanzaic envoi that differs between the poem's two editions.
This is a timeline of philosophy in the 17th century.
A miscellany is a collection of various pieces of writing by different authors. Meaning a mixture, medley, or assortment, a miscellany can include pieces on many subjects and in a variety of different forms. In contrast to anthologies, whose aim is to give a selective and canonical view of literature, miscellanies were produced for the entertainment of a contemporary audience and so instead emphasise collectiveness and popularity. Laura Mandell and Rita Raley state:
This last distinction is quite often visible in the basic categorical differences between anthologies on the one hand, and all other types of collections on the other, for it is in the one that we read poems of excellence, the "best of English poetry," and it is in the other that we read poems of interest. Out of the differences between a principle of selection and a principle of collection, then, comes a difference in aesthetic value, which is precisely what is at issue in the debates over the "proper" material for inclusion into the canon.
Poetry of Scotland includes all forms of verse written in Brythonic, Latin, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, French, English and Esperanto and any language in which poetry has been written within the boundaries of modern Scotland, or by Scottish people.
Nigel Smith is a literature professor and scholar of the early modern world. He is William and Annie S. Paton Foundation Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature and Professor of English at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1999. He is best known for his interdisciplinary work, bridging literature and history, on 17th-century political and religious radicalism and the literature of the English Revolution, including the poetry and prose of John Milton and Andrew Marvell.