In all of the wise and informed messages about E.I's reading (for which much
thanks!), did anyone mention Harrington's Ariosto? Harrington might have
had a special claim on this particular readership. (In English,
Montemayor's Diana and Malory's Morte d'Arthur were popular with different
parts of the reading class to which Elizabeth more or less belonged. And
the old series called The Tudor Translations seems a group to consider --
Underdowne's tr. of Heliodorus' Aethiopian History, and things like the
Cyropedia of Xenophon.) The Ocean to Cynthia she may not have read, or even
been able to, but again, it surely had its claim, which Raleigh more or less
made when referring to his Belphoebe when he was put in the Tower. I would
think Sir Thomas Wyatt would be in the same category, a (pro-)generation
earlier, so to speak. Some of this is by way of saying that poetry and
court politics were surely intertwined in a way that no politician could
really imagine nowadays. (Correspondents said little enough about the Latin
classics, tho' Boethius finally turned up, for the good reason that she
translated De Cons. Phil., and was herself a prisoner.) Egregious example
of classics: the compliments to the goddess-figure in the April eclogue and
Belphoebe in FQ I think presume -- and presumably correctly -- the poet's
eventual patron's knowledge of Virgil.) We must also think that the various
English and/or Protestant Bibles (Bishops, Great, Geneva) would figure
significantly in the reading of the head of the English Church (and the Book
of Common Prayer she'd know almost without reading!). Jim N.
On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:01:23 -0400
William Oram <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks to all of you who helped with my question about Elizabeth's
> English reading. I've now got some places to start. Bill Oram
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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