Horace Made New : Horatian Influences on British Writing from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century

This book, a celebration of the bimillennium of Horace's death and a successor to Ovid Renewed (Cambridge University Press 1988), explores, in as balanced and comprehensive a way as the editors could achieve, the presence of Horace in English letters and culture from the Renaissance onwards, in the form of a series of critical essays by different specialists, including two distinguished poets. The wide span of its coverage shows that there has been a continuous interest in Horace throughout the modern period, whereas it is often supposed that Horace's influence was only of central importance in the eighteenth century. Horace's 'autobiographical' mode was attractive to the humanists of the sixteenth century, and the lyric poetry inspired a richer response in the seventeenth than in the eighteenth. Horace indeed is a major (if often hidden) element in the English poetic tradition, both directly and as a result of the imitation and appropriation of his works by Wyatt, Jonson, Dryden, Pope and others. The book also casts fresh light on the character and interpretation of Horace, things intimately connected with the historical reception of his works, particularly by some of their most influential and sensitive readers, the great English poets. The book is aimed at a wide and general readership: those interested in the classical heritage, the cultural importance of Horace and issues of interpretation in comparative literature and cultural history.