"Englishing" Horace: The Influence of the Horatian Tradition on Old and Middle English Poetry.

Author/Editor
Hastings, Justin A.

Title
"Englishing" Horace: The Influence of the Horatian Tradition on Old and Middle English Poetry.

Published
Hastings, Justin A. "Englishing" Horace: The Influence of the Horatian Tradition on Old and Middle English Poetry. Ph.D. Dissertation. Loyola University, 2016. vi, 287 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A78.07(E). Fully accessible ProQuest Theses & Dissertations Global and at https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2283/.

Review
Hastings' abstract: "This dissertation explores the ways in which Old and Middle English poets made use of the poetic corpus of the Roman Augustan Age poet Horace (Quintus Flaccus Horatius) and the medieval commentary tradition that accrued around it. It considers especially the Late Antique commentaries of Porphyry and PseudoAcro as well as the scholia transmitted in Bern MS Bernensis 363 and Paris, BnF MS Latin 17897. The Old English elegies in the Exeter Book (Exeter Cathedral MS 3501) are the subject of the second chapter. Subsequent chapters focus on William Langland's 'Piers Plowman,' John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' and Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' (with especial emphasis on Fragments VIII and IX)." In chapter four, Hastings assesses "what role the Horatian tradition may have played in the moral counsel Gower sought to provide to his king through the 'Confessio Amantis'." He comments on two spurious attributions to Horace of material in Gower's Latin commentary, followed by close analysis of four passages in CA where, Hastings argues, Gower "uses the Horatian tradition to inflect the tone and timbre of his other source material to admonish Richard II on the proper exercise of virtue. Specifically "These subtle criticisms on ethical conduct and procreative sexuality provide counterweights to two of the criticisms most commonly laid against the Ricardian court: an culture whose excesses bordered upon the effete and a king whose relationship with Robert de Vere caused anxiety 'vis-à-vis' dynastic succession" (196).

Date
2016

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis