Calling all English Majors...

[neotoma]

I'm looking for romantic poetry from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobin periods -- say 1580 to 1608. I'd like to avoid Shakespeare, since I know there *were* other poets out there then. Donne? Marlowe? Who else might have been popular enough for octavos of their poems to be available?

How familiar would an educated man have been with the Roman poets? I could get to the dirtier bits of Catallus, but is that period? Or would someone else be better for the 'classics' of the time?

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Oh, two more names:

Petrarch and Dante. Both were translated into English by the Jacobean period and were highly influential.

As for me, I think that "On His Mistress Going to Bed" is one of the most erotic poems in the English language.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have considered "On His Mistress"... I'm just not sure that it is what you use to seduce your best friend after being away at sea for months and you've brought him a chest full of books as a present.

[writestufflee.livejournal.com]

Too bad you've decided to avoid Shakespeare,then ; there's a fair amount of homoeroticism in his sonnets.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, and I might run off to the young man sonnets if I get desperate, but there were other writers of the time, and I doubt Robbie could bring back only Shakespeare and still fill a sea-chest. Shakespeare wasn't the whole of the publishing industry back then, no matter how enduring he has proved.