The poetry of Horace was central to Victorian male elite education and the ancient poet himself, suitably refashioned, became a model for the English gentleman. Horace and the Victorians examines the English reception of Horace in Victorian culture, a period which saw the foundations of the discipline of modern classical scholarship in England and of many associated and lasting social values. It shows that the scholarly study, translation and literary imitation of Horace in this period were crucial elements in reinforcing the social prestige of Classics as a discipline and its function as an indicator of gentlemanly status through its domination of the elite educational system and its prominence in literary production. The book also discusses how the framework of study and reception of a classical author such as Horace, so firmly established in the Victorian era, has been modernised and democratised in recent years, matching the movement of Classics from a discipline which reinforces traditional and conservative social values to one which can be seen as both marginal and liberal.
Author(s): Stephen Harrison
Series: Classical Inter/Faces
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 216
City: London
FC
Half title
Classical Inter/Faces Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Preface
Preface to the Volume
1 Preliminaries: From English Augustan to Victorian Horace
Introduction: Horace and cultural capital
A case study: Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century translations
Rochester, Dryden and Pope: Versions in context
The Romantics: Byron, Wordsworth, Keats
Horace and the Victorian gentleman
2 Horace in Victorian Commentaries, Literary Criticism,
Translations
Commentaries
Literary criticism
Translations
(i) Martin
(ii) Conington
(iii) Lytton
(vi) Gladstone
(v) Other complete versions
(vi) Partial versions
3 Horace and the Victorian Poets I: Tennyson, Arnold, Clough, Fitzgerald
Tennyson
Arnold
Clough
Fitzgerald
4 Horace and the Victorian Poets II: Other Imitations
Horace updated
Horace the Victorian young man
Loftier allusions
5 Horace in Victorian Fiction
Horace at Athens
Horace and the major Victorian novelists
(i) Charles Dickens
(ii) William Makepeace Thackeray
(iii) George Eliot
(iv) Anthony Trollope
(v) Thomas Hardy
6 Epilogue – Modernizing Horace
Envoi
Notes
Bibliography
Index
