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A quote from Steven J. Reid in the new book "Corona Borealis"
"Early modern Scots understood Classical culture and history with a depth and completeness that modern scholars can admire but scarcely emulate."
"Early modern Scots understood Classical culture and history with a depth and completeness that modern scholars can admire but scarcely emulate."
He calls for more thorough study of Scottish Neo-Latin literature "to re-orient the understanding of the intellectual landscape of early modern Scottish humanism, and to place it more firmly within the shared Latinate culture of the large European Republic of Letters (...)"
"Where it rightly belongs"
He notes also -
"Scots wrote Neo-Latin poetry in virtually every recorded Classical genre and in completely new ones, including 'journalistic' accounts on current events in Scotland and Europe, poetic narratives on France..."
He notes also -
"Scots wrote Neo-Latin poetry in virtually every recorded Classical genre and in completely new ones, including 'journalistic' accounts on current events in Scotland and Europe, poetic narratives on France..."
"and other countries they visited, anti-Catholic satire, Christian epic, erotic and obscene epigrams, and eulogies, to give but a few examples."
"However, an abiding concern of much of the poetic output of this Scottish Latin renaissance was a preoccupation with James VI, both as king of Scots and then as the first ruler of a united 'British' realm."
"(...) in fact, a large part of the corpus of Latin literature produced after 1603 comprised commentary on Jacobean and 'British' politics, or was addressed to James as a learned and Latinate ruler who greatly valued the language."
He concludes "this focus on James provided much of the impetus behind Latin's enduring popularity in an increasingly vernacularised Scottish literary culture" and that Scottish Neo-Latin literature's "popularity began to decline so quickly after his demise"
Perhaps of interest @jeltzz @DrFrancisYoung
