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The Eclogues of Giles Fletcher the Elder: Composition, Circulation and Reception, c. 1560-1660

Van Dijk, Sharon; (2021) The Eclogues of Giles Fletcher the Elder: Composition, Circulation and Reception, c. 1560-1660. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis is the first complete study of the nine Latin eclogues of Giles Fletcher the Elder (1546-1611), which he wrote in the 1560s and 1570s whilst at Eton and Cambridge. Fletcher’s eclogues have been at the periphery of scholarship on early modern pastoral, perhaps in part because he was a manuscript poet: only two of his eclogues appeared in print during his lifetime. Considering the composition, circulation and reception of his eclogues from the unusual schoolboy eclogues he composed in 1563 to the inclusion of one of his Cambridge eclogues in a manuscript sequence from the 1650s, the thesis examines their allusions to earlier Latin verse and their connections to contemporary and later poetry in English and Latin. It sheds light on Fletcher’s position in the history of Anglo-Latin and English pastoral, arguing that he played a significant role in it: he wrote sophisticated European style eclogues, which were distinctly English in their setting and the topics they addressed. He thus introduced features of contemporary continental pastoral whilst forging a distinct Cambridge Protestant pastoral, which influenced the later pastoral works of Edmund Spenser (1552?-99), Phineas Fletcher (1582-1650) and John Milton (1608-74). The thesis illustrates the influence manuscript verse could have in the early modern period and shows that early modern Latin and English poetry cannot be read in isolation, as they shaped each other. It also discusses the use of the term ecloga for verse-dialogues without any pastoral features in the second half of the sixteenth century and demonstrates that Latin occasional poems could be copied and recontextualised in manuscript years after the occasion for which they were written, gaining new (political) meaning in a different context.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification: Ph.D
Title: The Eclogues of Giles Fletcher the Elder: Composition, Circulation and Reception, c. 1560-1660
Event: UCL (University College London)
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Greek and Latin
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10140069
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