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Harry
Vredeveld, ed. & trans.
The Poetic Works of
Helius Eobanus Hessus, Volume 1: Student Years at Erfurt, 1504-1509.
MRTS, 2004.
(MR 215).
640pp.
ISBN 86698-257-4.
Publisher's
recommended price $75.00/£60.00
Eobanus Hessus (1488-1540)
was the most celebrated poet of the German Renaissance and Reformation.
Mutianus Rufus hailed him as "a modern Pindar." Reuchlin crowned him
"the king" of poets. To Erasmus he was a Beatus Rhenanus, Melanchthon,
Reuchlin, and Hutten all rolled into one: a "Christian Ovid." His star
blazed resplendent for as long as Latin was read as a living language.
Besides a brilliant style and a humanist’s learning he brought to his
work an uncommonly wide range of themes, a warm and engaging tone, and
a refreshing boldness in pioneering new genres on German soil. In this
first volume of his Poetic Works he bursts onto the scene with two
lively narrative poems about student life at Erfurt (1506). These are
followed by an exuberant praise of the university (1507), a prosimetric
satire on a student’s passion for a prostitute (1508), and a cycle of
eclogues that celebrate his friends and ideals, alternately laud and
decry conditions at Erfurt, and trace the poet's inner growth from
callow youth to maturity (1509). Subsequent volumes will include his
famed Letters of Christian Heroines, Luther Elegies, On Keeping in Good
Health, Idylls, On the Tumults of these Times, Epicedia, Nuremberg
Glorified, and the nine books of impromptus or Sylvae - all of them
presented in a critical edition, with idiomatic translations and
informative introductions and notes.
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