Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Sources of Les Amours De Jean Antoine De Baif: Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Pennsylvania
But these imitated poems, far from expressing the dominant note of the Amours de M time, are in strong contradiction to it. Whatever their practice in life, and whatever the sentiments expressed in their comedies, the Italians were rarely wanton in. Their sonnets. For the most part their sonnets are the expres sion of the mystical, ideal love treated in the numerous dialogues and treatises on love. In their Latin poems, however, the Italian poets sang the love of the Latin elegiacs rather than the love of the Vito Nuova. It is not surprising that this Should be the love to which Baif gives expression in his earliest work. Lazare de Baif, our poet's father, had won a name for himself by his classical erudi tion. He had given his son the best classical education. In the epistle Au Roy, which prefaces the complete edition of his poems, Baif gives a somewhat detailed account of his studies, which were' largely Latin and Greek. With the exception of Jean Dorat, his teacher, he was the most learned member of the young brigade. Ronsard did not begin his classical studies until he was twenty-five. Du Bellay acquired his knowledge of the ancients by reading them in bed during a long illness.13 When, under the guidance of Dorat, this group of young men turned their attention to the master-pieces of Greece and Rome, Baif was undoubtedly the most familiar with the classical poets and most ready to imitate them. It is not strange that his earliest work contains many imitations of the poets of antiquity and is. Filled with recollections of them. But there again we must be on our guard against saying that Baif went directly to the ancients for his originals. The Italians and the modern Latin poets were also imitating the classics very generally, and Baif, who translated these imitations in a num ber of cases, may have done so more widely than we have yet dis covered. There are, however, a number of imitations which we are reasonably sure he took directly from the classics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
