Jonson, Horace and the Classical Tradition

Abstract

The influence of the Roman poet Horace on Ben Jonson has often been acknowledged, but never fully explored. Discussing Jonson's Horatianism in detail, this study also places Jonson's densely intertextual relationship with Horace's Latin text within the broader context of his complex negotiations with a range of other 'rivals' to the Horatian model including Pindar, Seneca, Juvenal and Martial. The new reading of Jonson's classicism that emerges is one founded not upon static imitation, but rather a lively dialogue between competing models – an allusive mode that extends into the seventeenth-century reception of Jonson himself as a latter-day 'Horace'. In the course of this analysis, the book provides fresh readings of many of Jonson's best known poems - including 'Inviting a Friend to Dinner' and 'To Penshurst' - as well as a new perspective on many lesser known pieces, and a range of unpublished manuscript material.

A Catholic Horace at the English Court: Paratextual Manipulations in Thomas Hawkins's Odes of Horace (1625-1638)

“…A3v). What Holland seems to mean here is that Hawkins's translation is so good that it cannot but attract the attention of-and perhaps even alarm ("rouse")?-Jonson, who, by his translations and imitations of Horace's poems (including a version of Horace's Art of Poetry that would be published posthumously in 1640), had already claimed for himself the title of "the English Horace" (see on this Pierce, 1981;Steggle, 1999;and Moul, 2010).…”

New Directions in Jonson Scholarship

“…Unsurprisingly, their chapters share much in common with Moul's book, the first 'monograph … devoted to Jonson's appropriations of Horace'. 73 Moul stages 'textual "encounters"' between Jonson, Horace, and other classical and early modern poets; these encounters are 'active … conversations' involving 'appropriation and rivalry rather than mere resemblance'. 74 Moul argues that when we do pay attention to his Horatianism, we tend to think of Jonson alluding to, or worse, plagiarizing.…”

“…96 Moul's reading of 'Penshurst' generally agrees with Evans's that the poems sincerely praise the Sidney family, although the echoes from Juvenalian and Horatian satire remind us that the Sidneys offer only momentary respite from a world in which envy and corruption are normal. 97 The four books discussed in this review draw a picture of a political Jonson who is constantly concerned with his role in the court and in changing court factions, who is deeply engaged with the fate of England as it shapes its national identity, who is always concerned with the aesthetics of his works, and who is particularly aware and anxious about the gap between ideal and lived relations between readers/audiences, authors, and patrons -always wanting to establish mutually beneficial relationships grounded in classical virtues, but constantly threatened by the need for economic and social resources. Jonson's masques, poems, satires, and tragedies, fascinatingly, seem to be the most overtly political of his works -though this impression may be the consequence of a move in Moul's monograph and Cousins and Scott's volume (as well as Donaldson's biography) to provide coverage of Jonson's oeuvre, and to fill critical lacunae.…”