초록/요약

A collection of poems published in the mid-sixteenth century and attributed to the ancient Greek poet Anacreon (sixth century BCE) provided European poets with an important model of poetic persona and practise for three hundred years. Praised for their sweetness and simplicity, Anacreontic odes were widely imitated and translated until their reputation plummeted in the nineteenth century with the discovery that they represented not genuine archaic Greek lyric but a later tradition of Hellenistic imitation. The loss of cultural prestige has meant that a once-significant poetic mode has remained understudied. This paper surveys the early modern English Anacreontic tradition, beginning with Edmund Spenser and concluding with Royalist poetry of the later seventeenth century, with a focus on an unpublished and not previously discussed manuscript translation (c.1660) of the complete Anacreontea. In the late sixteenth century, Anacreontics played a role in the transition away from Petrarchan frustration, denial, and idealism toward a poetry expressive of sensuality and desire; in the earlier seventeenth century, they offered a model of witty situation and epigrammatic concision; in the mid-seventeenth century they helped in the creation of a royalist poetics. Few classical traditions have performed as much poetically productive critical work in the early modern period, and yet remain so little known or studied.