I'm responding to Terry Krier's prompt concerning
Spenser's verse letter to Harvey, his principal
contribution to the Letters of 1580. I did work up a
translation, as accurate as my small Latin could make
it, in the course of some work on Spenser's dialogical
relationship with Harvey at what I've termed the end of
the beginning of his career. Copies were distributed at
the Kalamazoo conference some years back, and Terry,
bless her heart, has treasured hers, making good use of
it in some work of her own. I don't plan to publish the
translation, although I remain interested in the poem
and open to inquiries from anyone who might find my
glosses / glozes useful.
Richard McCabe includes the poem in his Penguin edition
of The Shorter Poems; his prose translation is more
authoritative than mine, though I might quibble with his
phrasing in one or two places. His commentary is
valuable, though limited in scope.
The person to ask about Spenser's Latin verse is Patrick
Cheney, general editor I believe for a new edition to be
published by Oxford. I suppose one or two members of
his team are hard at work on Spenser's Latin (and, I
hope, the Letters in their exasperating, tantalizing
entirety).
On a tangent, maybe not irrelevant: William Barker has
written to me about the work that he and a collaborator
(sorry, the name escapes me) are well along in their
work on a new edition of Gabriel Harvey's published and
private writings, including the Letter-Book: designed in
part for print, in large part for a web archive.
Cheers, Jon Quitslund
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