Neo-Latin Texts from Bloomsbury

The British publisher Bloomsbury has published at least 3 volumes of Neo-Latin literature: 1 volume each of European and British texts, and 1 of texts in British Universities. 1 more volume, dealing with Latin plays written by Jesuits in Japan, may have already appeared. However, I have had only the first 3 volumes before my eyes, and so this post will concentrate mostly on those. Bloomsbury's website shows 6 further volumes scheduled for publication later in 2023 and 2024, with texts by Ermolao Barbaro, Roger Ascham, Robert Persons, SJ, Classical scholars, and Popes Urban VIII, Alexander VII and Leo XIII. Here is the page on this Neo-Latin series on Bloomsbury's website. 

The first 3 volumes in this series, An Anthology of European Neo-Latin Literature, An Anthology of British Neo-Latin Literature and An Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature in British Universities, present a selection of excerpts of items published between AD 1500 and 1800 in the first two volumes, and between AD 1500 and 1700 in the volume concerning British universities. 

 

Each Neo-Latin text -- 19 of them in the volume on European Latin, 18 in the volume on British Latin and 11 in the volume concerning Latin in British universities -- is preceded by an introduction and followed by a commentary, and furnished with a facing-page English translation, each text's apparatus provided by a different luminary from today's world of academic Latin and related fields. The introductions provide information about the authors and situations in which the texts were written, the commentaries help to explain passages which might otherwise be mysterious. They are simply splendid, with much useful information for both the layperson and the specialist. I'm sorry, but I have nothing to carp about here.

The selection of authors in the volumes on European and British Neo-Latin will cause no great surprise to those already familiar with the field: Erasmus, More, Elizabeth I, Buchanan, Milton, Barclay and the other stars of the period are all there. There is Bembo on Columbus' first voyage, Fracastoro on syphilis, an excerpt from John Barclay's novel Argenis -- the usual suspects.

The volume on Latin in British Universities stays true to its title, offering treatises on the correct teaching of Greek, on various power struggles between universities and politicians as well as panegyrics on statesmen with whom the universities happened to have more harmonious relations, and some student compositions which are more art for art's sake.