Campion, Thomas | J. W. Binns (essay date 1974)
J. W. Binns (essay date 1974)
SOURCE: Binns, J. W. “The Latin Poetry of Thomas Campion.” In The Latin Poetry of English Poets, edited by J. W. Binns, pp. 1-25. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
[In the essay that follows, Binns evaluates Campion's major poems written in Latin.]
About one-third of Thomas Campion's poetical output is written in Latin. It is customary by and large to ignore this in any assessment of his poetry. Yet a study of his Latin poetry is sufficient to modify the traditional view of Campion as a poet memorable chiefly for his agreeable but minor Elizabethan lyrics. Campion's two longest poems are both in Latin, and in these he forsakes the brief lyric and writes kinds of poetry which he never attempted in English. The Latin elegies are an important part of the corpus of his love poetry, whilst in his numerous epigrams he displays his abilities as a writer of short poems in other than lyric mould. The first...
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