About the Book
This anthology presents a selection of works that illustrates the traffic between British poetry and classical literature.
Gives readers the classical background they need in order to really appreciate British poetry.
Divided into two halves – the first half presenting a selection of the best British poems, and the second presenting relevant classical works in translation.
Notes and introductions highlight the connections between British works and their classical forebears.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments. Introduction.
A Note on the Texts.
English Writers.
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400).
from The Wife of Bath’s Prologue lines 627-822.
Edmund Spenser (1552-99).
from The Faerie Queene.
Book 2, Canto 12.
Sir Walter Ralegh (1554-1618).
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586).
Astrophil and Stella 1-3, 47, 83.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593).
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
Sonnets 55, 60, 74, 77.
Thomas Campion (1567-1620).
My Sweetest Lesbia.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637).
To Penshurst.
Inviting a Friend to Supper.
John Donne (1572-1631).
The Sun Rising.
Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674).
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.
To His Muse.
John Milton (1608-1674).
Lycidas.
from Paradise Lost.
Book 1, lines 1-74.
Book 4, lines 411-91.
Richard Lovelace (1618-58).
Love Made in the First Age: To Chloris.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678).
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland.
To His Coy Mistress.
John Dryden (1631-1700).
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham.
Aphra Behn (1640?-1689).
The Disappointment.
The Golden Age.
John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680).
The Imperfect Enjoyment.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).
A Description of a City Shower.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
from The RAPE of the LOCK.
Canto I.
Canto IV.
James Thomson (1700-1748).
Winter: A Poem (1726).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).
The Vanity of Human Wishes.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771).
An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard.
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat.
Mary Leapor (1722-1746).
An Essay on Woman.
William Cowper (1731-1800).
Epitaph on a Hare.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
Laodamia.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
Kubla Khan.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
Adonais.
John Keats (1795-1821).
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).
The Lotos-Eaters.
Robert Browning (1812-1889).
Pan and Luna.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).
Dover Beach.
Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936).
A Shropshire Lad XV.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
A Thought from Propertius.
Two Songs from a Play.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).
Dulce et Decorum Est.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973).
The Shield of Achilles.
Derek Walcott (1930-).
from Omeros.
Book 1, Chapter 1.
Seamus Heaney (1939- ).
Bann Valley Eclogue.
Classical Writers.
Homer (8th century BCE?).
from the Iliad.
Book 1, lines 1-305.
Book 18, lines 478-608.
from the Odyssey.
Book 1, lines 1-10.
Book 5, lines 148-281.
Book 8, lines 266-366.
Book 9, lines 16-124.
Book 10, lines 198-347.
Book 12, lines 142-259.
Hesiod (fl. c. 700 BCE).
from Theogony.
lines 1-80.
from Works and Days.
lines 53-201.
lines 504-35.
Sophocles (c. 496-406 BCE).
from Antigone.
lines 582-602.
from Trachiniae lines 112-38.
Thucydides (c. 455-400 BCE).
from The Peloponnesian War.
Book 7, 44.
Plato (c. 429-347 BCE).
from Symposium.
sections 209e-212a.
from Ion.
sections 533a-535c.
Asclepiades (fl. early 3rd c. BCE).
from the Greek Anthology.
Book 5, 85.
Theocritus (fl. early 3rd c. BCE).
Idyll 1.
Idyll 11.
Bion (fl. late 2nd c. BCE?).
Lament for Adonis.
Meleager (fl. 100 BCE).
from the Greek Anthology.
Book 7, 207.
Moschus, so-called (1st c. BCE?).
Lament for Bion.
Lucretius (c. 94-55 BCE).
from On the Nature of Things.
Book 2, lines 646-60.
Book 3, lines 1-30.
Book 3, lines 894-911.
Catullus (c. 84-54 BCE).
Carmen 2.
Carmen 3.
Carmen 5.
Carmen 8.
Carmen 13.
Carmen 101.
Virgil (70-19 BCE).
Eclogue 2.
Eclogue 4.
Eclogue 5.
Eclogue 10.
from the Georgics.
Book 1, lines 299-423.
Book 2, lines 458-542.
Book 3, lines 384-93.
from the Aeneid.
Book 1, lines 1-215.
Book 2, lines 1-56.
Book 4, lines 1-30.
Book 5, lines 315-39.
Book 6, lines 268-316.
Book 6, lines 679-751.
Book 6, lines 854-92.
Book 11, lines 759-831.
Horace (65-8 BCE).
from the Satires.
Book 2, 6.
Epode 2.
from the Odes.
Book 1, 11.
Book 1, 37.
Book 2, 18.
Book 3, 2.
Book 3, 30.
Book 4, 7.
Book 4, 10.
from the Epistles.
Book 1, 5.
Tibullus (c. 50-19 BCE).
from the Elegies.
Book 2, 3.
Propertius (c. 50-16 BCE).
from the Elegies.
Book 2, 2.
Book 2, 15.
Ovid (43 BCE- 17 CE).
from the Amores.
Book 1, 1.
Book 1, 2.
Book 1, 3.
Book 1, 5.
Book 1, 13.
Book 2, 6.
Book 3, 7.
Heroides 13.
from the Art of Love.
Book 1, lines 269-344.
Metamorphoses.
Book 1, lines 89-112.
Book 1, lines 253-312.
Book 1, lines 452-567.
Book 2, lines 760-832.
Book 3, lines 316-510.
Book 15, lines 143-258.
Book 15, lines 871-79.
Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 CE).
from the Natural History.
Book 16, 88.
Lucan (39-65 CE).
from the Civil War.
Book 1, lines 114-57.
Book 1, lines 223-43.
Martial (c. 40-104 CE).
from the Epigrams.
Book 1, 3.
Book 3, 58.
Book 5, 78.
Book 10, 48.
Book 11, 52.
Juvenal (fl. early 2nd c. CE).
from Satire 6.
lines 1-54.
lines 434-507.
Satire 10.
Cross-reference Tables.
I. English-Classical.
II. Classical-English.
List of Authors.
I. English.
II. Classical.
III. Translators.
List of Titles.
I. English.
II. Classical.
Index to the Notes
About the Author :
Robert DeMaria, Jr. is the Henry Noble McCracken Professor of English and Chair of the Department at Vassar College. His recent publications include Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading (1997) and British Literature 1640–1789: An Anthology (Second Edition, Blackwell Publishing, 2001).
Robert D. Brown is Professor of Classics at Vassar College on the Sarah Miles Raynor Chair. He is the author of Lucretius on Love and Sex (1987) and articles on a range of Roman authors including Lucretius, Caesar, Virgil, Horace, Livy, and Ovid.
Review :
"Anyone seeking a single volume reader on the connections between English and classical literature need look no further. The editors have made a varied and representative choice of texts, which will provide students with a gateway to a tradition of extraordinary richness and fascination." Charles Martindale, University of Bristol
"An unusual and imaginative anthology. This refreshingly conceived volume makes vivid to English readers an important selection of both English and classical poets, and shows the deep relationships between them in a manner that bypasses the academic perspectives of 'influence studies.'" Claude Rawson, Yale University
“No matter where the reader chances to open the Anthology, he or she will be assisted in understanding and appreciating both the modern selections in the first half of the book and their classical sources in the second.”
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
“Laudable and respresentative anthology which does an effective job of showing … how English poetry is indebted to classical models … .New and interesting material.” Notes and Queries
