Introduction

Summary

The literary culture of early modern England was bilingual; literature of all kinds, including poetry which is the focus of this book, was read and written in both English and Latin throughout the whole of the period that we call Renaissance or early modern. Both the overlap and the lack of overlap between Latin and English poetry make a difference to our understanding of this literary culture. It matters that so many apparently innovative moves in English poetics – including the fashion for epyllia, epigrams and Cowley’s ‘irregular’ Pindaric odes – can be traced back to continental Latin poetry: that is, to ‘neo-’ Latin rather than primarily classical verse; it is also important that there are some forms – such as sonnets in English and (until Marvell’s First Anniversary) short panegyric epic in Latin – that were a characteristic feature of verse in one language but not the other. This introduction outlines the educational and literary context in which this poetic bilingualism emerged and developed, with a particular emphasis upon the cultural centrality of 'paraphrase' broadly understood.